A jury awarded $2.7 million to Philly man badly hurt in a crash caused by a police cruiser. But there’s a catch.

After a Philadelphia police officer ran a red light and struck Anthony Blume three years ago, breaking his neck in three places, he was left unable to work. Broke, he ended up having to move from his home to a boardinghouse to avoid eviction.

Last month, a jury put a price tag on his trauma, awarding him nearly $2.7 million. But now the city says it has no intention of paying him even a quarter of that.

Blume is the latest person to run up against a Pennsylvania law, last updated in 1980, that caps at $500,000 how much municipal governments must generally pay when people have been hurt — or even killed — or have suffered property damage because of official mistakes.

The cap is designed to protect taxpayers and local governments from runaway court judgments in negligence lawsuits. It has not been raised since it was enacted, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House.

Blume, 47, the father of six children, said he went to court knowing the city would likely challenge any big dollar award because of the ceiling.

“I didn’t want to waive my right to a jury trial. I wanted my story to be heard,” he said in a recent interview. “My injuries and the city’s liability far pass that archaic cap. I believe the cap didn’t serve me any justice.”

He and his lawyer, Jordan Strokovsky, are still hoping to find a way around the law. Perhaps, they say, the city will reconsider and exercise its discretion by paying the larger sum anyway.

“He lost his livelihood, he lost relationships,” Strokovsky said. “A guy who was a gym rat who could bench-press 450 now has issues holding on to a gallon of milk. He can’t bend, he can’t kneel. Driving is difficult.”

“Moving forward, I’m hoping that we can possibly challenge this,” Blume said. His lawyer added: “Or that the city will do the right thing and pay him regardless of what the [law] says.”

In the midweek accident on Aug. 14, 2019, police officer Chad Culbreath was rushing along with other police to respond to a scene at which six police officers were shot and wounded in North Philadelphia during a drug raid. Blume was struck at 4:30 p.m. as he drove his Honda Civic from Cayuga Street into the intersection with Broad Street. He broke his arm as well as his neck.

Blume had the green light. Culbreath’s emergency lights and siren were on, as were those of another police cruiser behind him, according to the department’s investigation report. The crash took place a mile from the block where police had been fired upon.

While state law permits police to move through red lights without stopping, the official directive in effect in Philadelphia stipulates that police must come to a complete stop. The department’s report said witnesses said Culbreath slowed, but it makes no mention of him stopping.

Blume spent three days at Einstein Medical Center, had multiple surgeries, and is still recovering, he said. Culbreath remains on the force.

A department investigator concluded on the day of the accident that the officer violated policy by failing to maintain complete control of his car and failing to make sure the intersection was clear before entering it. Nonetheless, more than a year later, the city’s Risk Management Division sent Blume a letter claiming he owed the city $44,645.15 for the damage to the officer’s car.

“Our investigation indicates that you are liable for this property damage and the city of Philadelphia intends to recover the damages incurred,” wrote a risk management specialist in October 2020.

“Talk about putting salt in the wound,” Strokovsky said.

The city later dropped its demand that Blume pay. Weeks before the civil trial, city lawyers conceded that the accident was caused by negligence on the part of the officer and the city and offered Blume a $500,000 settlement, according to documents reviewed by The Inquirer.

Pennsylvania law caps at $500,000 per incident the amount municipalities must pay in cases of death, injury, or property damage, regardless of how many victims there are or the dollar amount of their losses. The lid on payment by the state and related state agencies is even lower: $250,000.

A key exception: The cap does not apply in cases involving civil rights violations, such as when police beat or frame a suspect. Since 2010, the city has paid out about a dozen claims of $1.6 million or more in police-related matters, records show. In 2018, in the largest payout on record, the city agreed to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit by paying almost $10 million to Anthony Wright, who was wrongly imprisoned for 25 years in a murder case.

On April 19, the same day the jury in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court made Blume a millionaire on paper, the city filed a motion asking the judge to reduce the jury award to the cap. Judge Craig B. Levin has yet to rule.

“The $500,000 cap applies no matter how many people are injured or how many people suffer property damage as a result of an accident or event,” the city argued.

Municipal lawyers cited two cases in which the state Supreme Court upheld the cap: a 1979 gas explosion in the city’s Bridesburg section that killed seven people, injured many others, and caused extensive property damage; and a $14 million jury verdict awarded to Ashley Zauflik, a 17-year-old girl who sued the Pennsbury School District in Bucks County after losing a leg in 2007 when run over by a school bus.

A spokesperson for the city Law Department declined to comment on the case.

On May 5, the city, along with Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, and others, filed a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court supporting SEPTA in a suit filed by Hailey Freilich, who lost a foot at age 33 in 2017 when a bus turned into her as she was on a crosswalk at Broad and Vine Streets.

SEPTA admitted its driver’s mistake and agreed to a $7 million verdict but later successfully filed a motion to reduce that amount to the $250,000 cap applicable to it. The Common Pleas Court judge in the case, James Crumlish III, imposed the smaller payment but called the outcome “profoundly unfair” compared with a suit against a private person — and noted that after legal fees, court costs, and reimbursements to an insurer, Freilich would not collect a penny of the $250,000.

Crumlish also pointed out that, adjusted for inflation, the equivalent figure for the 1980 figure of $250,000 was almost $900,000.

In the friend-of-the-court brief, Philadelphia and the others said lifting the cap would force governments to cut services or raise taxes.

Strokovsky said the amount of the cap was long outdated.

“It’s sickening that after wrecking Mr. Blume’s life the City of Philadelphia now seeks to deprive this man of the just verdict handed down by a jury of his peers,” he said. “This emboldens them to mistreat seriously injured folks.”

Ferment around the issue appears to be growing. The state Senate voted last year to direct its Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to study the cap and make recommendations. The report is to be made public later this spring, said Patricia Berger, the committee’s executive director.

In the unanimous opinion in 2014 rejecting a challenge to the limit by the Pennsbury student, then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille wrote: “The facts here are tragic, involving a school student who suffered grievous injuries caused by the uncontested negligence of the school district’s employee.”

However, Castille said, the legislature was “in the better position than this court” to decide to raise the cap.

The chief justice noted that critics of raising the ceiling said doing so might spell “financial ruin” for some local governments and transfer crucial spending decisions from elected officials to juries.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Max Baer questioned whether the cap infringes on the constitutional right to a jury trial. Baer said he was worried that the ceiling meant lawyers would not pursue cases.

“Simply put, plaintiffs’ counsel cannot responsibly agree to enter an appearance in a case where there will be no or (a minimal) return to the client because of the costs and fees necessary to secure a successful result,” Baer wrote.

While Blume awaits the resolution of his case, he regrets how the accident and the city’s response to it have affected his life. He now receives food stamps and government assistance to pay his rent. “I have no money. I have no income,” he said. “I have anger and depression.”