LA attorney makes heartbreaking point as family of boys killed in 'game of chicken' are awarded $176 million
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Mark and Jacob Foundation
The family of two boys killed after being struck by an LA socialite were awarded $176 million, with their attorney speaking out about the preventable tragedy.
Mark and Jacob Iskander were just 11 and eight when they were hit and left for dead while crossing the street with their mother and younger sibling Zachary.
The pair were killed in the Westlake Village on September 29, 2020, after Rebecca Grossman, 62, and her former boyfriend and ex-Dodgers baseball player, Scott Erikson, were playing ‘a high-speed game of chicken'.
Grossman has since been sentenced to a 15-year-to-life sentence for the murders of Mark and Jacob, while Erikson escaped criminal charges by agreeing to film a careful driving video.
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Grossman, who hit the children before leaving the scene, was handed two felony counts of murder, two felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one felony count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death at a Van Nuys court in February 2024.
On Wednesday June 3, a jury found the pair had been negligent and acted with malice when they raced against each other after having allegedly drank margaritas at a nearby restaurant.
In response, the Iskander family’s attorney, Brian Panish, said something heartbreaking.
He had actually asked that the family be awarded $375 million, and while you might think that it’s a lot to grant, the cost was much more.
“Is that a lot of money?” The Independent reported he asked the jury. “Yeah. But it’s a tremendous loss… What could be worse for a parent than to see your kids run down by a drunk driver?”
Los Angeles civil litigator Neama Rahmani revealed one thing about the case to The Los Angeles Times that makes it easy to understand why the verdict was delivered the way it was.
He said the case ‘had everything you need for a nuclear verdict’, including the deaths of the children, ‘a parent and child who witnessed their deaths’, as well as the alleged driving whilst under the influence and playing ‘chicken’ on the streets.
“This was a big win for the plaintiffs,” he added.
During Grossman’s trial two years ago, Nancy, the children’s mother, claimed Grossman had been 'zig-zagging' between lanes with Erickson, ‘as if they were playing’ and didn’t stop once she made impact with the boys.
Instead, police officers apprehended her a third of a mile down the road.
“They didn’t stop before the intersection,” Nancy had said, per Oxygen. “They didn’t stop at the intersection. They didn’t stop when an 11-year-old was on the hood of the car... Nobody stopped.”