By admin 
The photos shown to a Placer County jury on Tuesday weren’t terribly dramatic — a red Cadillac with damage on its rear passenger side and a motorcycle on the ground — but they symbolized a vehicle crash that cost a retired CHP officer his life and put a leading Sacramento area businessman in an uncomfortable spotlight.
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The images were displayed in court as opening statements began Tuesday in a wrongful death case against developer and minority Sacramento Kings owner Phil Oates. The businessman, 75, sat in the front row of the courtroom in Auburn’s historic Maple Street courthouse, wearing a gray suit and black headphones to amplify the statements and testimony.
Oates was at the wheel of the Cadillac on a sunny early evening in 2024, heading east on Douglas Boulevard in Granite Bay as Patrick Mulderrig, on the motorcycle, drove west. Oates turned left in front of Mulderrig toward Kingsgate Drive, and the motorcycle slammed into the Cadillac, propelling Mulderrig into the air and leading to his death, both sides agreed.
The businessman and host of the annual Phil Oates Celebrity Golf Tournament had not been drinking, and was not ticketed in connection with crash, a police report showed. A police officer at the scene said he cooperated and had not been grossly negligent. Prosecutors declined to file charges.
But Mulderrig’s widow, Miranda Flores, filed a lawsuit seeking up to $30 million in damages. Her attorney, Roger Dreyer, said in his opening statement on Tuesday that he would present evidence showing that Mulderrig suffered before he died, and that Flores’ emotional and economic losses in connection with his death were high.
What was lost
The widow, who sat on the far right side of the courtroom near the jury box while the panel was being selected on Monday, was not in court for opening statements and testimony by Mulderrig’s sister on Tuesday.
Mulderrig was 60 when he died, and his wife, 19 years younger, was 41, Dreyer told the jury. The couple met when she was 21 and he was nearly 40. He retired a year after their 2014 wedding, and spent the rest of his days caring for her and their home, Dreyer said.
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Mulderrig’s life expectancy was around 80, Dreyer said. He showed the jury of eight men and four women a chart with the value of Mulderrig’s CalPers pension over the next 20 years — more than $2 million.
He also said he would present evidence that Mulderrig continued to have brain activity for five hours after the crash, implying that he might have felt pain during that time — for which Flores could be compensated.
How to weigh tragedy
But attorney Chris Hogan, who representing Oates, said paramedics and the doctor who treated Mulderrig at Sutter Roseville Medical Center reported that he was unconscious and in a coma the entire time. He was not administered pain medication at the hospital, even during surgery as doctors tried to save his life, Hogan said.
Mulderrig was “at all times unmoving and unresponsive,” Hogan said. “He never regained consciousness.”
The case was sad, Hogan said, and Oates had made a mistake while driving that he had acknowledged. As the case continued, Hogan said, he would ask the jury to carefully weigh the economic value of any damages owed to Flores.
“We are not asking you to (deny) this tragedy,” Hogan said. “We’re just asking you to measure it carefully within the confines of the law.”
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