Jury Awards $24M to Widower of Woman Killed in Florida Hotel Cabana

June 29, 2015

A South Florida jury awarded $24 million to a man whose pregnant wife was killed when a drunken driver slammed into a cabana at a Fort Lauderdale hotel.

The decision came more than three years after a car crossed a sidewalk, jumped a curb and plowed into the poolside cabana at the Riverside Hotel. Jurors assigned 15 percent liability – or $3.6 million – to the hotel.

The Sun Sentinel reports Michael DeMella was in a restroom a few feet away when his 26-year-old wife Alanna DeMella died. She was seven months pregnant. The couple had won a trip to Fort Lauderdale from their church in Woburn, Mass.

Jurors assigned 85 percent of the responsibility to 37-year-old Rosa Kim. She was sentenced in January to 15 years in prison.