Spokane County goes to trial over 2007 hypothermia death of 84-year-old man

A jury heard opening statements Monday in a civil case against Spokane County brought by the family of an 84-year-old man who froze to death in a snowstorm nearly a decade ago.

Kay Mita reported for jury duty on the morning of Nov. 26, 2007, and left the jury room for a lunch break but didn’t return at the scheduled time. He apparently became confused and disoriented, wandering around the courthouse grounds unable to find his car, which was parked less than a block away.

Although his family reported him missing at about 7 p.m., neither Spokane police in the adjoining building nor courthouse security guards, who allowed him to stay in the building until it closed, knew of the missing person report.

Wearing pants and a light jacket, Mita stayed near the courthouse in snow and subfreezing temperatures overnight until he died of hypothermia. His body was found the next morning, sitting near the steps of the courthouse’s south entrance.

Mita’s widow, Shizuko, and their only son, Floyd, sued the county and its contracted security firm, Guardsmark LLC, in 2010 after filing a claim for $5 million in damages. Among other things, they claimed the county provided false assurances that authorities would search for Mita following a missing person call.

Judge Patrick Monasmith threw out the claims against both the county and Guardsmark in a pair of rulings in November 2012 and January 2013, but an appeals court resurrected the case in June 2014, saying Monasmith had not addressed central questions in his rulings. Shizuko Mita, who was married to Kay for more than 50 years, died weeks before the appeals court ruling at age 89, leaving their son to pursue the lawsuit.

Monasmith, who typically serves on the Superior Court for Ferry, Pend Oreille and Stevens counties, again dismissed Guardsmark from the litigation in November 2015, but he allowed the claims against the county to proceed to trial. Guardsmark no longer provides security for the courthouse; the county now contracts with a firm called Allied Universal.

During opening statements Monday, attorney John Allison, who’s representing Kay Mita’s estate along with law partner Richard Eymann, described Mita as a devoted husband, father and 40-year employee of the Burlington Northern Railroad.

Born and raised in Yakima until he was 19, Mita, a son of Japanese immigrants, spent three years with his family in the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming during World War II. Allison said Mita rarely spoke about that experience but was excited to serve on a jury, viewing the opportunity as a long-delayed acknowledgment of the injustice he had faced some six decades earlier.

Allison then took the county to task, telling jurors that Mita died “because of a dangerous breakdown in the system that we all depend on for public safety.”

Specifically, Allison argued that Kelli Johnson, an operator in the county’s Crime Reporting Center – what’s now known as Crime Check – acted negligently by failing to inform police and security guards that Mita had been reported missing.

“Our evidence will show she made a dangerous choice when it was so easy to make the safe choice,” Allison said.

Johnson is now an emergency communications supervisor for the county. In a 2012 deposition and under questioning Monday, she said she could not remember the call she received in 2007, in which Floyd Mita said he hadn’t heard from his father in six hours.

But Johnson and the attorney for the county, Heather Yakely, noted that such calls come in relatively often – several times each week – and are not forwarded to dispatchers unless the missing person is determined to be “at risk.”

The criteria for making that determination include whether the person is mentally or physically disabled, developmentally delayed or impaired by the use of drugs, alcohol or medications. The handbook that call operators used in 2007 also left room for discretion with the phrase “special other factors.”

Johnson said that because Mita was an adult, his age was irrelevant. And in response to a question from Allison, she suggested it made no difference whether the temperature outside was below freezing or 70 degrees.

“Weather is not a special factor, and being 84 years old is not a factor, either,” she said.

Allison pressed her: “And do you still believe today, Ms. Johnson, that a missing 84-year-old in below-freezing weather and snow, at nighttime, is nothing to worry about?”

Johnson replied: “I do not believe that’s a risk.”

She also said she would not have made any assurances to Floyd Mita that authorities were searching for his father, because doing so would have violated county protocol.

In her opening statement, Yakely said the jury also will hear testimony from a court employee who came across Mita at the courthouse on the day he reported for duty.

“She had a conversation with him, and she’ll testify that he appeared to be fine,” Yakely said. “She asked him if he needed help, and he said he did not.”