Former MLB pitcher Scott Erickson told a jury Friday that he has little left of the roughly $46 million he earned in baseball as jurors weighed whether to add punitive damages in the fatal Westlake Village crash case involving two young brothers. The testimony came days after a civil jury awarded the Iskander family $176 million in wrongful-death and emotional-distress damages.
The reason Erickson is back in court now is simple: jurors are still deciding whether the punishment should go further. The former pitcher, 58, is among the people jurors found acted in concert with Rebecca Grossman, 62, in the sequence that led to the deaths of Mark and Jacob Iskander on Sept. 29, 2020. Grossman is already serving 15 years to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder for fatally striking the boys with her Mercedes SUV.
Erickson said bad business decisions, a divorce and taxes have left 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 he has not had a job since 2019 and told jurors he earned more than $46 million in contracts during his career. He also said, "I have not been very honest," and added that he feels terrible about what happened. At one point, he said he truly believed that if he had somehow been able to stop, he might have saved the boys’ lives.
That account did not satisfy the family’s lawyer, Brian Panish, who pressed Erickson on whether he and Grossman may be hiding assets. Panish pointed to an unreported $237,000 withdrawal and an investment in an unidentified billion-dollar company, and asked whether the punishment should fit the offense. The back-and-forth underscored the fight now before jurors: whether Erickson’s claimed financial losses are the full story, or whether there is more money available to satisfy any additional penalty.
The crash itself has already been described in painful detail in court. Witnesses said Mark and Jacob were in a crosswalk at Triunfo Canyon Road with their mother and younger sibling when two speeding vehicles approached after Erickson and Grossman had been drinking at a Westlake Village cantina and were heading to Grossman’s home. Erickson testified that he avoided hitting the brothers, but Grossman did not. Jurors found Grossman and Erickson acted in concert, and they are now deciding whether to impose punitive damages on top of Wednesday’s award. That decision could come soon, and it will determine whether the civil case ends with compensation alone or with an added financial punishment tied to one of Southern California’s most closely watched wrongful-death trials.
