Disabled Man’s Suit Over Truck Crash Goes to Jury : Subaru: Millions of dollars are at stake in the two-month trial to determine the cause of the accident.

A jury was asked Thursday to decide if the city of Oxnard and a Japanese car maker or a careless driver is to blame for an accident that has left an Oxnard man unable to walk.

On Aug. 2, 1992, Israel Echevarria and two friends were driving to Santa Barbara for the afternoon. Echevarria, then 18, was sitting in a rear-facing plastic seat in the bed of a Subaru Brat when it left Teal Club Road and crashed into a ditch.

He was tossed from the truck and landed on his head. He remained in a coma for three months, and when he awoke, his left arm was gone and he was unable to walk.

Now 21, he blames the design of the Subaru Brat as well as the design of the Oxnard road for his fate.

Potentially millions of dollars are at stake, and both sides have hotly debated even the smallest points during the two-month trial. The animosity each side has for the other is so palpable in the courtroom that the judge has chided each side to “stop with the zingers.”

The jury sent to deliberate the case Thursday was asked only to determine who caused the accident. If it determines that either the car maker or the city is liable for the accident, the trial will resume to set damages. If the jury determines that the accident was the fault of the driver, the trial ends and Echevarria gets nothing.

A battery of five attorneys hired by the car maker and the city has spent the last eight weeks trying to convince the jury that the accident was nothing more than a tragic incident with no one to blame but the driver and Echevarria in this closely watched liability and negligence case.

The attorneys even dispute how the Brat crashed. Echevarria claims the vehicle rolled. Subaru counters that it merely spun out and remained upright.

“This has been the longest case that I have ever participated in,” Superior Court Judge Joe D. Hadden said Thursday before sending the jury to deliberate. “This has been a tough case.”

Japanese journalists are waiting alongside industry analysts for a verdict. At issue is the Brat’s trademark space-age-looking open-air seats in the bed of the vehicle.

Echevarria claims that Subaru of America and the company that owns it, Fuji Industries Ltd., knew that those seats were dangerous and yet continued to market the vehicle to young people.

“They created this danger when they stuck these cheap plastic seats back there and lured teen-agers to sit back there,” Echevarria’s attorney, Edward Steinbecher, told the jury Wednesday during his closing argument. “They targeted young people. The name Brat is significant. It has appeal.”

Subaru attorney Richard Bowman, however, countered that the Brat “has a remarkable amount of safety for a small, light vehicle” and that “horsing around and goofing off” led directly to the accident and Echevarria’s injuries.

Witnesses testified that Echevarria was hanging over the side of the truck trying to get the driver’s attention immediately before the accident. The driver, Nathan Stevens, also admitted on the stand that he was distracted by Echevarria and took his eyes off the road.