‘Treated This Woman As a Criminal’: New Jersey Trooper Accused Driver Having a Stroke of Being Intoxicated, Delaying Medical Treatment and Leaving Her Brain Damaged, Lawsuit Says
A New Jersey jury awarded a $12.9 million verdict last week against a state trooper who failed to recognize that a woman motorist was having a stroke and arrested her for DUI, crucially delaying medical treatment that her attorneys argued caused severe brain damage and left her permanently disabled.
Cheryl Rhines of Jersey City, then 48, was dressed in business attire and driving to her job as a marketing executive on the morning of Oct. 17, 2017, when she suffered a stroke on the New Jersey Turnpike, her lawsuit says.
Her car hit the right guardrail of the highway and was still running when rookie state trooper Jennifer Albuja approached at least 30 minutes later, at 9:14 a.m.
Due to the stroke, Rhines was unable to respond to commands using the right side of her body to put the vehicle in park or turn it off, so the trooper did so, the complaint says. She was also unable to speak and respond to commands from Albuja, such as retrieving her license from her bag.
Albuja, according to a brief submitted by her attorneys, noted that Rhines was unresponsive to most of her questions and that she tried to put her seatbelt back on. Seeking to assess whether she had driven off the road due to being under the influence or an underlying medical condition, Albuja asked Rhines if she’d been drinking, had taken any drugs, or was diabetic.
Rhines’ attempts to answer were slurred and mostly inaudible, but at one point, she seemed to answer in the affirmative when asked if she was on medication or drugs, Albuja claimed.
When the trooper returned to her patrol car, she saw Rhines get out of her vehicle and try to walk. She was “wobbly on her feet” and kept herself from falling by grabbing onto the side of her vehicle.
Albuja, at this point, decided that Rhines was under the influence of an unknown narcotic and placed her under arrest, handcuffing her and putting her into the back of the patrol car. The trooper then proceeded to search the woman’s car and purse, finding no evidence of drug use.
The trooper later testified that she did not notice during the encounter that Rhines had facial drooping, including drooping eyelids, one of several known symptoms of a stroke in progress, along with slurred speech, disorientation, incoherence, and staggered walking, her attorneys conceded.
When they arrived at her home police station in Somerville at 10:32 a.m., Albuja noticed that Rhines had vomit on her face and shirt, the complaint says. Rhines was unable to get out of the car and had to be carried into the station.
A few minutes later, Trooper Alejandro Molina noticed that Rhines had asymmetrical drooping on one side of her body and thought she had suffered a stroke, the complaint said. Realizing that she was in need of immediate, emergent medical attention, he called for an ambulance.
As they waited for EMTs to arrive, the police officers left Rhines shackled on the floor, despite her ongoing medical distress, her attorney Dennis M. Donnelly told the New Jersey Monitor.
“I don’t think the jury liked that much,” he said, adding that the state police “see everybody in the public as a danger. They treated this woman as a criminal when she was helpless.”
Rhines was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was diagnosed with a stroke and treated with medication to clear a blot clot that was impeding blood flow to her brain.
Unfortunately, by that point, the approximate two-and-a-half-hour delay “caused by defendant’s conduct resulted in the death of significant brain function and permanent lifelong disability,” the complaint argues.
Rhines, who spent two weeks in the hospital and another month in a rehabilitation center, now has debilitating speech, cognitive and motor deficits, all of which are permanent. She cannot return to work and will require lifelong home care, medical treatment and supervision, the lawsuit says.
Now 56, she lives with her mother in Nashville. She is unable to speak or understand what people say to her and has a language disorder called global aphasia that is caused by stroke-related brain damage, Donnelly said.
“Her work life and her abilities to live as a normal human being are over,” he said.
The lawsuit charges Albuja and the New Jersey State Police with negligence and breach of duty to care for Rhines, arguing that the trooper knew or should have known that Rhines was having a stroke or serious, life-threatening medical event and taken action to provide her with immediate medical care as soon as she encountered her on the side of the road.
“Any ordinary human being observing Cheryl Rhines would have immediately recognized and called for emergent medical care,” it says.
Plaintiffs also claim that troopers mocked and ridiculed Rhines “both on and off audio and video recording of the incident” and accused the stroke victim of “playing games” and “resisting” commands, conduct that forms the basis of their charge of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The defendants deny that dashcam or bodycam video recording the incident or any other evidence supports those allegations.
Both sides agreed that Albuja, who graduated from the police academy in January 2016, had received training in identifying life-threatening conditions, including strokes, and how to administer the Cincinnati Stroke Scale, a widely used guide for assessing possible strokes.
Rhines “indisputably displayed many of the hallmark characteristics of drug-induced impairment, including slurred speech, loss of coordination and general unresponsiveness. Unfortunately, these same symptoms can be associated with a stroke,” her attorneys said.
Because she did not notice Rhines’ facial drooping, Albuja’s belief that the impaired driver was intoxicated was wrong but “objectively reasonable,” the defendants argued, and the actions that Albuja took based on that mistaken belief were in “good faith enforcement of the law,” which should make her immune from liability under the New Jersey Tort Claims Act.
The jury did not see it that way, and after a nearly month-long trial, on Jan. 29, initially awarded Rhines $19.1 million to cover her future medical care, emotional distress, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of income.
However, after reviewing the evidence, under the guidance of New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas Vena, the jury determined that 60 percent of her disabilities resulted from the delayed medical response and 40 percent from the stroke itself, which Trooper Albuja did not cause. So they reduced the award by 40 percent, then factored in some additional medical costs, which lowered the final judgment to $12.9 million, according to a proposed order filed by the plaintiffs on Feb. 5.
Both parties continue to haggle over about $2 million in medical and long-term disability expenses factored into the final verdict amount that the judge must approve, according to documents filed in court last week. The defense has proposed a final judgment of $10.9 million.
New Jersey State Police and the state attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the case.
Albuja was later counseled by her supervisors after the incident, Donnelly said, but only after he sued the state on Rhines’ behalf in 2019, the Monitor noted.
The multimillion verdict award is unusually high for lawsuits filed against the state. In 2023, New Jersey paid out $121 million to settle 364 claims, and only 23 resulted in payouts over $1 million.