Scott Erickson told a civil jury on Friday that he has little left of the roughly $46 million he earned during his major league career, as jurors weighed whether to impose additional punitive damages in the case over the deaths of two brothers in Westlake Village.
The testimony came after jurors on Wednesday awarded the Iskander family $176 million in wrongful death and emotional distress damages, a sweeping verdict that set the stage for the next phase of the case. The family’s attorney is now pressing for more, asking the panel to punish Erickson and Rebecca Grossman after the earlier finding that both played a role in the fatal crash.
Erickson, 58, said he has not had a job since 2019 and blamed bad business decisions, a divorce and taxes for leaving him with $9,000 in the bank, a $13,000 monthly MLB pension, $242,000 in a retirement account and $200,000 in equity in a Las Vegas condo. He said under questioning that he was sorry for what happened and that he believes he could have saved the boys’ lives if he had been able to stop in time.
Mark Iskander was 11 and Jacob Iskander was 8 when they were killed on Sept. 29, 2020, after Rebecca Grossman fatally struck them with her Mercedes SUV while they were in a crosswalk at Triunfo Canyon Road with their mother and younger sibling. Erickson was driving a separate AMG Mercedes SUV ahead of Grossman’s vehicle that night, and jurors found that he and Grossman acted in concert and that he was negligent in the deadly crash even though he said he avoided hitting the brothers.
That finding leaves the focus on money and intent. Brian Panish told jurors that Erickson and Grossman may be hiding assets, pointing to a $237,000 withdrawal and an investment in an unidentified billion-dollar company, while Erickson said he had not been fully honest about his finances. Grossman is serving a sentence of 15 years to life in prison after her conviction for second-degree murder in the same crash.
The jury’s next decision will determine whether the civil punishment grows far beyond the $176 million already awarded to Nancy Iskander, Karim Iskander and their surviving child. For Erickson, whose career once put him in the spotlight as a World Series winner with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the question now is not what he earned, but what, if anything, jurors believe he still has to pay.
