$35M awarded in deadly WaveRunner crash

WEST PALM BEACH — A jury today awarded $35 million to the families of a teenager killed and another badly injured in 2005 when the WaveRunner they were on collided with a boat.

The two girls, 14-year-old Jaysell Perez and 15-year-old Samantha Archer, had celebrated Easter Sunday at Dr. Eugene Holly's waterfront home on North Flagler Drive when they took off on the WaveRunner. Perez was killed and Archer gravely injured when the so-called go-fast boat first crushed the Cooper City teens and then sliced them up in the instant following impact.

Their attorneys have spent the past month trying to convince a Palm Beach County jury that the accident was avoidable. Yamaha, the WaveRunner's manufacturer, set the stage for it by ignoring years of warnings about flaws in the steering system, attorney Robert Baker said.

Archer, who was driving, did exactly what any beginner would do when she decided to head back to Holly's house, said David Kleinberg, who represents her, at the beginning of the trial. She took her hand off the throttle to slow for the turn. What she didn't know was that once she released the throttle, she couldn't steer the water scooter, Kleinberg said.

"She did exactly what is intuitive and exactly what Yamaha said they were going to do," he said. Instead of turning, the Wave-Runner went straight, colliding with the boat.

Baker said 1986-2000 owner's manuals warned that beginners were likely to release the throttle when headed toward an obstacle. "Don't forget to accelerate," it advised. In 2001, he said, the warning was inexplicably removed even though the danger still existed.

Yamaha was one of the last water scooter manufacturers to correct the steering problem. It did so in 2003. The girls were on a 2001 model.