$30 Million Settlement for Teen Left With Brain Injury in Paulding County School-Zone Crash
Won by Butler Kahn.
Jeb Butler and Matt Kahn won a $30 million settlement for a 14-year-old North Paulding High School student who suffered a traumatic brain injury after a speeding teen driver struck her in a school-zone crosswalk.
What happened
On the afternoon of January 11, 2022, school had just been dismissed at North Paulding High School in Paulding County. A ninth-grade student, 14 years old, was walking through a marked crosswalk on campus toward football practice when a 17-year-old driver sped through the parking lot at 25 mph in a posted 15 mph zone and struck her. The force of the collision sent her onto the asphalt.
The injuries were catastrophic. The teen suffered a fractured skull and severe traumatic brain injury requiring two emergency surgeries. She spent roughly three months at Children's Scottish Rite Hospital. Doctors initially warned her family she might never walk or speak again. Her hospital bills alone exceeded $3 million.
Jeb Butler and Matt Kahn of Butler Kahn filed suit on her behalf. The defense initially denied liability, arguing the driver could not have stopped in time because the victim was jogging, and offered $250,000 to settle the case. Butler Kahn rejected the offer and built the plaintiff's case around eyewitness testimony, expert accident reconstruction, and a frame-by-frame animation showing the driver's sightline and the gap between the posted speed limit and the speed the driver was traveling. The animation put the jury in the driver's seat and illustrated exactly how much time and distance the driver had to slow down before the crosswalk.
After more than two years of litigation, the case resolved at mediation for $30 million. The settlement will fund lifetime care for the teen, whose recovery has continued against the original medical prognosis: she has regained the ability to walk with assistance and to speak, and she participates in her community.
The result was reported by the Law.com Daily Report in March 2024 as one of the larger pedestrian-TBI settlements in Georgia in recent years.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Law.com Daily Report: Atlanta Lawyers Get $30M for Teen Struck in School Zone (Mar. 26, 2024)·Archived copy
- 2.Atlanta Journal-Constitution: North Paulding High Student Critically Injured When Hit by Car on Campus (Jan. 2022)·Archived copy
- 3.WSB-TV Channel 2 Atlanta: Miracle Teen Standing, Talking After Brain Injury From Crash (Dec. 2025)·Archived copy
- 4.DK Global Case Feature: $30M Settlement From $250K Offer for Student Struck by Vehicle (2024)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Butler Kahn
All Butler Kahn proven verdicts →A 2002 Dodge Ram 15-passenger van carrying 16 women from the We Are Living Proof sober-living program rolled over and caught fire on I-85 at the I-985 split in Gwinnett County on April 24, 2021, killing seven and injuring nine others. Families and survivors sued the van's driver, Chrysler and parent company Stellantis, the group home, and two repair shops, alleging a rollover-prone design, a defective steering system, and a fuel system that let gasoline ignite after impact. The claims settled in 2024 for a combined $162,000,000, described as the largest settlement from a single-vehicle wreck in Georgia history. Families and survivors were represented by several firms, including Shiver Hamilton Campbell and Beasley Allen.
Jeb Butler and Matt Kahn, alongside co-counsel, secured a $40 million settlement against GDOT, a fence contractor, and a construction management firm after a guardrail left in disrepair for months on I-85 contributed to the death of Catrice Hunter.
Jeb Butler co-tried the first Jeep rear-fuel-tank wrongful-death case to a Georgia jury, which returned a $150 million verdict in 2015 later affirmed at $40 million by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2018.
A Henry County jury awarded $29.4 million against PeachState Hospitality after one of its housekeepers, hired without a background check despite a prior statutory rape charge, used a master key to repeatedly assault a 13-year-old girl staying at the company's Residence Inn in McDonough, Georgia.
Related car accident verdicts
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.