By CYNTHIA MAYER
St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer

The family of a St. Petersburg doctor who was killed in a 1983 car wreck was awarded more than $2.3-million Wednesday in what may be the largest jury verdict ever in Pinellas County.

Dr. Zenaida Miranda was killed on August 5, 1983 while driving with her husband in St. Petersburg. She died of injuries received when the Mirandas' car was hit by a van driven by an employee of Kane Furniture Corp.

The jury Wednesday assessed the damages against the furniture company.

The two-day trial in Clearwater turned on one key question whether the driver who killed Mrs. Miranda could still be considered working for Kane Furniture on the afternoon he hit the Mirandas. Under Florida law, companies can be held liable for their employees' actions as long as the employees are on the job.

The defense argued that employee Michael Kraus wasn't. Kraus was driving his own van and had finished his last major job of the day, installing a carpet for the company.

He also had stopped working, attorneys said, to get some drinks with a coworker. But when he struck the Mirandas at 4:15 that afternoon, Kraus was on his way back to the Kane Furniture warehouse, according to testimony. He had promised to drop off the coworker at the warehouse. Also, witnesses testified, he had money and invoices from the work he had done that day.

Invoices customarily are turned in at the end of each day, a Kane's employee testified. Kraus shot through a stop sign at a high speed, hitting the couple's brown Mercedes, according to officers who investigated the accident. Kraus had a blood alcohol level more than 2 1Ú2 times above the legal limit assumed for intoxication, 0.10. He is now serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to a DUI-manslaughter charge stemming from the wreck.

Jurors decided Wednesday that Kane Furniture Corp. was civilly responsible and awarded Mrs. Miranda's husband Romulo and three children what attorneys for the family believe is the highest amount ever given in Pinellas County: $2,305,000. "We're elated," said Wil Florin, an attorney for the family.

The attorney for Kane Furniture, Joseph C. Mason Jr., would not say whether the company will appeal the verdict and declined comment on the trial. Officers of the company could not be reached. Mrs. Miranda was a general practitioner at Gateway Community Hospital. She and her husband, also a doctor, are from the Philippines, according to the family's attorney, Thomas Carey.

Juror Clayton Glore said jurors agreed quickly on the furniture store's liability. "The biggest thing that influenced me was about the invoices," he said. "If you're working away from the office, it doesn't release your boss from some responsibility for your actions."

Glore said he decided on a high sum partly because of the pain and suffering Miranda endured. Miranda tried to save his wife after the accident by applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation, according to testimony, even though he had glass fragments in his eye.