Jury Finds Bel-Air Bay Club 80% at Fault in Member's Heat Exhaustion Death, $15 Million Reduced to $12 Million
After trial: The jury set damages at $15 million and found Mr. Keck 20 percent at fault, reducing the award to $12 million.
Won by Greene Broillet & Wheeler.
William M. Keck III, 48, died on September 3, 2017 after developing heat exhaustion during a paddle tennis tournament at the Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades. Club staff did not call 911 for about three hours. On November 25, 2019, a Santa Monica jury found the club 80 percent at fault and set his mother's damages at $15 million, which comparative fault reduced to $12 million.
What happened
William M. Keck III, a 48-year-old commercial real estate broker from Marina del Rey, went to the Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades on September 3, 2017, to play in a paddle tennis tournament. The day was hot and humid. Around 1:30 p.m. he began to cramp and asked a locker room attendant to massage his calf.
Over the next three hours the cramping spread and he kept sweating heavily. Staff gave him water and Gatorade. Nobody called 911. The club had written procedures calling for an emergency call when a member showed signs of heat exhaustion, and according to the plaintiff's case those procedures were not followed. The first call came at 4:57 p.m., when Mr. Keck began having trouble breathing. Paramedics arrived about four minutes later and found him turning blue. He was pronounced dead at a hospital at 5:56 p.m. The cause of death was a heart arrhythmia triggered by elevated potassium, which resulted from heat exhaustion.
His mother, Katherine 'Kitty' Keck, sued the club in Los Angeles County Superior Court (case BC704134), alleging that its staff were not trained to recognize the symptoms and failed to get him medical care while there was still time to save him. Bruce Broillet and Alan Van Gelder of Greene Broillet & Wheeler represented the family, with Mr. Broillet as lead trial counsel.
The club's lawyers argued that Mr. Keck had pre-existing health conditions and had not been following his medical regimen, which they said kept staff from recognizing how dangerous his potassium levels had become. The club declined to comment to the press after the verdict.
The case went to a Santa Monica jury after a two-week trial. On November 25, 2019, the jurors found that Ms. Keck had lost $15 million in love, affection and companionship with her son. They assigned 80 percent of the fault to the club and 20 percent to Mr. Keck himself, which cut the award by $3 million to $12 million.
After the verdict Mr. Broillet said the case was about the stunning lack of training and negligence that caused a tragic death that could have been prevented, and he called on other athletic facilities to take heat exhaustion seriously. We found no report of an appeal or of payment.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.California Jury Verdict Review & Analysis, 'Katherine Keck v. Bel-Air Bay Club Ltd.', No. 213813
- 2.Patch, 'Keck Family Wins Lawsuit Over Son's Death At Bel-Air Bay Club', Nov. 2019·Archived copy
- 3.Palisades News, 'Pali Beach Club to Pay Woman Over $10M After Son Dies From Heat Exhaustion', Nov. 2019·Archived copy
- 4.Circling The News, 'Bel-Air Bay Club Must Pay $12 Million to the Mother of a Member Who Died at the Club', Dec. 2019·Archived copy
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