Dies Family Awarded $2.5 Million Settlement
Feds Pay Up for Congressional Aide's Hit-and-Run Death of Mallory Dies
After a year of legal haggling and political haranguing, the U.S. government has agreed to pay the family of Mallory Dies $2.5 million for the death of the 27-year-old Santa Barbara resident by congressional aide Raymond Morua.
Morua, then a district representative for Congressmember Lois Capps, hit Dies in a drunk-driving accident last December. Capps’s office repeatedly denied that Morua — who had two prior DUIs — was working at the time, but the Dies family and their attorneys maintained he was indeed on the clock. They filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the government earlier this year and signed the settlement on November 1, three days before the general election.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the agreement, which stipulates the government doesn’t admit any liability in Dies’s death. Dies family attorney Robert Stoll, however, dismissed the document’s language as pro forma and said “implicit in the payment is a full admission of liability.” It isn’t clear why the deal had not been openly discussed until now.
