Instacart must pay $16M after its inattentive driver kills Portland man, jury says

A Multnomah County jury ruled late last week that the delivery app company Instacart must pay nearly $16 million after one of its drivers struck a Southwest Portland man on a Vespa motor scooter, causing his drawn-out, agonizing death in a hospital bed almost one month later.

The jury gave the estate of 74-year-old Peter Pellegrin every dollar it asked for.

An attorney for the dead man’s family said the case should matter to anyone on the road because it is the first of its kind that he knows of in Oregon — and one of a few nationwide — that successfully holds big tech companies like Instacart, Uber, Lyft or DoorDash financially liable when one of their independently contracted drivers injures or kills others. Most often, it is the victims, the poorly insured drivers and their personal insurance companies who must fight the big companies as they struggle to deal with the financial aftermath, said Ralph Spooner, an attorney for the deceased man’s estate.

“They make billions on the backs of little people and then when something goes wrong, they leave them to hang and dry,” Spooner told The Oregonian/OregonLive Monday.

Representatives from Instacart, which is worth nearly $10 billion and fielded more than 83 million orders in the third quarter of last year, didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday. Neither did lawyers who defended the San Francisco-based company and a separate lawyer for the Instacart driver. The trial lasted five days, concluding late Friday with the verdict against both Instacart and driver Melina Torres.

Spooner argues that the problem of inadequately insured drivers could be solved by companies like Instacart providing insurance or picking up the financial liability when the personal insurance of their “independent contractors” doesn’t cover the costs.

In Oregon, state law requires drivers to carry a minimum of $50,000 of insurance to cover injuries sustained in a crash. But when the 27-year-old Instacart driver struck Pellegrin on Feb. 7, 2024, the cost of treating Pellegrin far exceeded that, reaching more than $1.5 million.

Pellegrin, who was wearing a helmet, suffered broken bones throughout his body and was rushed to Oregon Health & Science University, where he died 25 days later after bouts of visible “agony” and displaying “mental anguish over his condition,” according to the lawsuit.

Jurors weren’t told how much insurance coverage Torres had and the amount wasn’t made public. But Spooner, the attorney for Pellegin, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that “the reality is most gig economy drivers only have minimum insurance. … If you’re needing to drive for Uber or Lyft or Instacart, you’re trying to make an extra 20 bucks or 50 bucks a day (and) you don’t have the resources.”

The lawsuit originally contended that Torres was distracted by the company’s wayfinding app as she turned her Jeep Grand Cherokee left across oncoming traffic and ran into Pellegrin during daylight hours in February 2024 in a section of town she was unfamiliar with, along Southwest Boones Ferry Road near 19th Avenue. That’s close to the border of Southwest Portland and Lake Oswego.

Torres, who was 27 at the time of the crash, testified only that she didn’t see Pellegrin, though lawyers for the estate of Pellegrin contended the mental stress of trying to make a grocery delivery in a specified timeframe could have contributed to the crash. Spooner said Torres also was trying to get back to her esthetician business for an approaching appointment.

According to Portland police reports, witnesses said Pellegrin was either traveling slowly or at about the speed limit of 35 mph. Police wrote Torres a ticket for making a dangerous left turn and she was fined $140.

The verdict will most certainly be appealed. Oregon’s wrongful death liability limit caps the amount that can be awarded for so-called “pain and suffering” to $500,000, though the legal community is awaiting the outcome of two cases currently before the Oregon Court of Appeals. The jury in Pellegrin’s case awarded about $14 million to widow Nanci Klinger for pain and suffering, meaning if a judge later reduces the amount to $500,000, the nearly $16 million verdict will shrink to about $2.5 million.

Pellegrin and Klinger, a retired deputy city attorney for Portland, had been married 39 years. They didn’t have children. He was retired at the time of his death, but spent his career as a national park ranger in California and Alaska, a traditional wooden boat builder, a teacher and an environmental scientist.

Attorneys Tyler Staggs and Ryan Bickler tried the case with Spooner for Pellegrin’s estate. James McCurdy and Julie A. Smith represented Instacart. Jeremy Rice represented Torres, the driver.