State officials have agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle two lawsuits stemming from rollover accidents on an icy Interstate 25 bridge at the Eldorado exit, lawyers say.

Santa Fe attorneys Paul Abrams and Chuck Purdy claimed that crashes that killed one woman and injured another could have been prevented. They argued that the state Transportation Department failed to adequately remove ice from the bridge, to maintain an automated system on the bridge that was supposed to apply de-icing spray, or to warn motorists that the bridge might be hazardous.

The state has since removed the automated de-icing system.

Katherine Martinez, 51, suffered a permanent brain injury when the truck in which she was riding slid on the bridge around 3 a.m. Easter Sunday in April 2009.

Almost exactly two years earlier, on April 7, 2007, actor Sally Sommer, 66, of Rowe died after her vehicle — also a Toyota Tacoma pickup like the one Martinez was riding in — rolled over after encountering ice on the bridge about six miles southeast of the Santa Fe city limits.

Sommer's case was settled for $535,000 last year. This month, Purdy said, attorneys for the state agreed to pay $899,000 to Elisa Martinez and her 2-year-old son for her mother's injury and for "loss of consortium." A hearing to finalize the deal is set for next month.

The money will offset some of the more than $500,000 in medical bills from the crash. Martinez's daughter, Elisa Martinez, said she hopes the lawsuit also motivates the state to better maintain bridges.

"I would give anything to have things back to what they were before the accident. Her personality is just really different from what it was before," said Elisa Martinez, 34, who hired a team of caretakers but still has to remind her mother to eat and shower. "She is learning to walk again. She goes to therapy three times a week. She keeps on, but she is not the same person anymore. It's like now I am the mom and she is the daughter."

Transportation Department spokesman Mark Slimp, who declined to be interviewed about the case, wrote that officials always have "the public's safety in mind when it fights winter storms and it will continue to do so into the future.

"Given the nature of winter storm weather in Northern New Mexico, it is not possible to keep every portion of the roadway clear of snow and ice at all times," he said. "As such, and despite every reasonable effort made by NMDOT, there are times when snow-packed or icy conditions exist on a roadway or bridge that demand that motorists take extra care."

Martinez was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash; Sommer was.

The bridge was equipped with a high-dollar, freeze-prevention system installed in 2002. The system was the state's first experiment with fixed anti-icing spray technology, which allows either remote or automatic spraying of anti-icing chemicals on a fixed structure such as a bridge or highway overpass.

Lawyers say they had evidence showing the system was not functional in 2004 or afterward.

Slimp wrote this week that state ultimately decommissioned the system because of operational problems and never installed similar systems on other state roadways.

"While NMDOT may consider re-implementing the system in the future, we need to be confident this would result in a system that works, but for now, NMDOT's current budget climate demands that we focus on more established winter maintenance operations," he wrote.

Attorney Purdy said the state didn't take advantage of experts who could have helped keep the system working as they do in other states. The system, which cost more than $270,000 to install, could have prevented the crashes, he said. It's still used successfully in states such as Minnesota, Virginia, Iowa, Washington, Oregon and Colorado, he wrote.

"The state has other options available to it to keep the roadways safe in Santa Fe County, particularly the interstates, other than what it does," Purdy said in an interview. "What it does is old-school stuff — getting out the crews and salt and cinders. There are dangerous spots, particularly bridges, that could be given a greater safeguard at a very low cost."

The night of Martinez's accident, he said, transcripts of emergency dispatch calls and other documents show that state officials were warned of bridge ice hours before the crash.

Even if the state had better signs at the bridge, he said, that bare-bones approach would have been better than doing nothing.

Slimp said the department plans to install 80 large signs to warn of possible icy bridges along I-25 and I-40 by the end of October.

De-icing has prompted litigation for the Transportation Department before. In 2007, a lawsuit argued that a 53-year-old woman died in a crash on N.M. 502 after the state improperly applied de-icer and failed to warn people about it.

Attorney Bob Rothstein said the state also made a payout to settle that case and that of a man who was injured in the same incident.

A few months after the December 2006 crash, the department announced that it would stop using the de-icing spray in an effort "to restore public confidence."

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.