Nearly $6 Million Verdict for Toddler's Daycare Beating
After trial: The verdict was later capped and the case settled for $3.1 million.
Won by Cooper Elliott.
A Franklin County jury found World Harvest Church and a daycare worker liable for beating Michael and Lacey Faieta's 2-year-old son, returning a verdict of nearly $6 million that was later capped and settled for $3.1 million.
What happened
In January 2006, Michael and Lacey Faieta enrolled their 2-year-old son at Cuddle Care, the daycare run by World Harvest Church, the Columbus megachurch led by televangelist Rod Parsley. The parents later said they found welts and marks on the boy's buttocks and legs after a day at the center. A substitute teacher, Richard Vaughan, had struck the toddler with a ruler.
The church disputed that any abuse occurred. Its lawyers argued the marks came from a skin rash, and they pointed to separate reviews by Franklin County Children's Services and the Columbus police, neither of which brought charges. World Harvest also contended that no medical testimony established abuse.
The Faietas sued in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas on a negligence theory, naming both Vaughan and the church. Cooper Elliott tried the case to a jury, and the central question was whether the church bore responsibility for what a worker did to a child in its care. The jury concluded that it did. On October 18, 2007, the panel sided with the family and returned a verdict of about $6 million, recorded as $5,999,100. The award against Vaughan included $134,865 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages, with the larger share of compensatory and punitive damages assigned to World Harvest Church. The Cuddle Care center later closed amid low enrollment.
The trial judge then reduced the total under Ohio's statutory damage caps. Final judgment was entered for roughly $2.9 million, about $2,871,432, with World Harvest Church solely responsible for $2,789,067. The church appealed. In 2008 the Tenth District Court of Appeals upheld the judgment.
In 2009 the church paid to resolve the case, and the settlement reached $3.1 million once post-judgment interest was added. A separate fight followed over who would carry that cost. World Harvest held a policy with Grange Mutual Casualty Company and sought reimbursement, arguing the conduct was corporal punishment rather than abuse.
That question reached the Ohio Supreme Court. In May 2016, the court ruled unanimously that the policy's abuse and molestation exclusion barred coverage, whether the church's liability was direct or vicarious. The decision left World Harvest Church responsible for the $3.1 million it had already paid.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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