Four boys one night in 2017 hurled a sandbag weighing at least 30 pounds over the side of an I-75 overpass in Toledo, killing a 22-year-old passenger in a car traveling below on the road. 

The minors, all 13 or 14 years old, were convicted of murder or manslaughter. But the mother of Marquise Byrd has sought to place the blame on the bridge builders and the state of Ohio, arguing that both parties failed to install the cage-like, anti-vandalism fencing over the partially closed bridge that’s required on almost every fully built structure in the state. 

Federal courts rejected the family’s lawsuit against Kokosing because the Ohio Department of Transportation approved the plans. On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that ODOT can’t be held liable either. 

The justices reversed a lower court opinion that could have led to Ohio paying financial damages to Byrd’s estate. The ruling likely means the end of the legal road for the estate of Byrd, who is survived by a fiance and son, according to NBC.

Courts and transportation officials have long recognized that if you build a bridge, people will try to throw pumpkins, rocks, scooters and other objects overboard. It’s an impulse that can have deadly consequences under the right circumstances. 

A court of appeals, controlled by Democrats, for that reason ruled that ODOT should be held liable for Byrd’s death given how predictable it is that people, if able to, will throw things off of it.

They emphasized that ODOT’s own bridge design manual says that the “primary purposes of protective fencing are to provide for the security of pedestrians and to discourage the throwing or dropping of objects from bridges onto traffic below.” Plus, the Indiana Avenue bridge in question previously had such protective fencing. When Byrd died, there was fencing on the south face of the bridge, which was open to traffic and pedestrians, while there was no fencing on the then-shut down north side. 

Supreme Court says ODOT has immunity

Republicans on the Ohio Supreme Court however ruled that ODOT’s choice not to install anti-vandalism fencing qualifies for immunity under Ohio law because it’s a “basic policy decision that involves the exercise of a high degree of discretion.”

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy in an opinion for the majority wrote that Byrd’s death is “tragic” but state lawmakers set the rules for when citizens can sue the state and “necessarily had to draw lines regarding which claims may be pursued against the State and which claims may not.”

An attorney for Patricia Wilkes, Byrd’s mother, couldn’t be reached for comment. In court documents, the plaintiffs were adamant that ODOT knew it should install fencing over the Indiana Avenue bridge.

“It is a tragic event that was not only foreseeable, indeed inevitable, given time and opportunity, but it was also preventable,” attorneys for Wilkes wrote. 

Justice Jennifer Brunner, the court’s lone Democrat, wrote a dissenting opinion. She said the ruling unduly shields the government from blame when it causes real harm.

“This court should not shield from private redress behavior by government officials that is careless, callous, fraudulent, or negligent by framing that behavior as discretionary decisionmaking,” she wrote. 

Matt Bruning, an ODOT spokesman, said in an email that “this was a tragic situation [and] we agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

Signal Ohio reached out to Kokosing for comment.