Sacto 9-1-1

From Andy Furillo

Defense and plaintiff attorneys rested their cases today in the wrongful death trial over a woman who died of drinking too much water nearly three years ago in a radio station's water-drinking contest.

Defense attorney Donald W. Carlson, who is representing the Entercom Communications Corp. and its Sacramento subsidiary concluded his case after calling just four witnesses - a forensic pathologist, an engineer at the radio station where the contest was held and two people who participated in the event.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd A. Phillips told the jury that closing arguments will take place next Tuesday.

The second-place finisher in the Jan. 12, 2007, contest, Jennifer Lea Strange, 28, died of water intoxication about five hours after she left radio station KDND "The End" 107.9. The "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest promised the popular video game to whoever could drink the most water without vomiting or going to the bathroom.

Plaintiffs' attorney Roger A. Dreyer finished his case earlier today by calling his final two witnesses - Jennifer Strange's two young children. Her son, Ryland, 6, and daughter Jorie, 3, did not mention their mother in their testimony, with Dreyer only asking them about things such as school and their favorite playmates.

Carlson began his defense today by putting on a pathologist who testified that she had never heard of anybody before ever dying of acute water intoxication.

Dr. Stephany Fiore of the Sacramento County Coroner's office conducted the autopsy on Jennifer Strange.

Fiore said she had conducted 2,300 autopsies in her five-year career prior to performing the post-mortem on Strange's body but that she "had never done a case involving acute water intoxication."

She testified in the Sacramento Superior Court trial that she had done cases where death resulted from hyponatremia, a condition that results from a water-salt imbalance that leads to swelling of the body's cells and ultimately its brain. Strange died from complications resulting from hyponatremia. But Fiore testified that hyponatremia can result from "quite a few other things" besides water intoxication, which is what led to the radio contestant's death.

Defense attorneys have argued in court papers that Strange's water-intoxication hyponatremia was not foreseeable and that defendants Entercom Communications Corp. of Philadelphia and its Entercom Sacramento LLC subsidiary, which operated KDND, should not be held liable.

Fiore testified that she did a literature search and found 18 such water intoxication deaths going back about 30 years. Fifteen of them involved schizophrenics. Marathon runners and military recruits accounted for the other three.

On cross-examination, Fiore said that there could have been additional hyponatremia deaths that did not require coroner's autopsies. She also testified that while she is only aware of the 18 deaths, that "acute water intoxication in certain populations is well known and well recognized."

During his cross-examination of Fiore, Dreyer made reference to the criminal investigation that the Sacramento County sheriff's department launched into Strange's death. No charges were filed in the case. But the reference to the investigation today prompted Carlson to ask the judge to declare a mistrial on grounds that Dreyer had prejudiced the jury.

Phillips denied Carlson's motion.

Contestant Ron Mendoza testified that he had known of a previous incident where a Chico State student had died of water intoxication in a college hazing incident. But he said "I didn't draw any similarities" between the college case and the KDND contest because "what I knew about Chico, it was against his will, versus a voluntary participation."

Mendoza said it was his understanding that he could drop out of the contest at any time. He said he dropped out a little more than two hours into the contest when "it looked like there were other contestants more determined to win the prize that I was."

Another contestant called by the defense, Aram Dermenjian, testified that he was the first contestant to drop out.

"We were told the first person to leave would get to go on the air, so I took advantage of that opportunity," Dermenjian said. He also testified that he began to get concerned when the contest upped the amount of water everybody had to drink, "only because I didn't know what that could do."

Dermenjian testified that he assumed the other people in the contest "would know their own limits."