$150,000 Verdict Against Mobile Home Park After Boy's Fatal Electrocution While Swimming in Indiana
After trial: The trial court added $60,000 in attorney's fees and $72,864.85 in litigation expenses to the verdict, for a $282,864.85 judgment before credit for an earlier payment. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed both awards on June 20, 2017.
Won by Hovde Dassow + Deets.
A 13-year-old boy was electrocuted and killed while swimming at a home leased in a mobile home park in Indiana in July 2010. After a three-day trial, a jury found his parents' total damages were $3,000,000 and put 5 percent of the fault on the park, producing a $150,000 verdict. The trial court then added attorney's fees and litigation expenses under Indiana's Child Wrongful Death Statute, and the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed that award in 2017.
What happened
On July 25, 2010, a 13-year-old boy was electrocuted while swimming at the home of a couple who leased their residence from Angel Shores Mobile Home Park in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. His parents, John and Megan Crays, filed a wrongful death suit on January 28, 2011, under Indiana's Child Wrongful Death Statute, naming both the couple who lived at the home and the park that leased it to them.
The case against the leaseholders resolved first. Those defendants settled after mediation in September 2013, on terms that were not made public. Angel Shores then named them as non-party defendants, which meant the jury would be asked to divide fault between the park and the couple even though only the park remained at the table. The Crays were represented by Nicholas C. Deets of Hovde Dassow & Deets in Indianapolis.
A week before trial, the parties signed an agreed stipulation that put a floor and a ceiling on the outcome, with a payment from the park to the family made before the first witness was called and no right for either side to appeal the jury's verdict. The trial began on March 10, 2014, and the jury returned its verdict on March 13.
The jury found the Crays' total damages were $3,000,000. It then divided fault between the two parties it considered responsible: 95 percent to the leaseholder and 5 percent to Angel Shores. Under Indiana's comparative fault rules, the park owed only its share of the total, which came to $150,000. The leaseholders had already settled and were not part of that figure.
The larger legal fight came afterward. The Crays asked the trial court to award their attorney's fees and litigation expenses. After briefing and a hearing in December 2015, the court ordered Angel Shores to pay $60,000 in fees and $72,864.85 in expenses, bringing the judgment to $282,864.85, from which the earlier payment was credited. Angel Shores appealed, arguing the Child Wrongful Death Statute does not authorize fees, and that any expenses should be cut to 5 percent to match its share of fault.
On June 20, 2017, the Indiana Court of Appeals rejected both arguments and affirmed. Judge Melissa May wrote that the statute allows other remedies provided by law and that Indiana's general wrongful death statute provides for attorney's fees, so a family suing over a child's death is entitled to them just as families suing over an adult's death are. The court also held that litigation expenses are allocated among the parties still in the case at judgment, not reduced by the fault assigned to a defendant who had settled. The opinion was a first of its kind in Indiana on whether fees can be recovered in a child's wrongful death case.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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