$26 Million Settlement for Toddler Burned in Over-Chlorinated Resort Pool
Won by Kenneth Berger.
Kenneth Berger secured a $26 million settlement for the family of a three-year-old who suffered severe chemical burns at Caribbean Resort and Villas in Myrtle Beach after a pool employee falsified chlorine records for years.
What happened
On Memorial Day 2020, a three-year-old boy spent the afternoon in the lazy river and pools at Caribbean Resort and Villas in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He seemed fussy on the drive home to North Carolina. That night he woke screaming. When his family checked, they found his groin and buttocks covered in blisters. His pediatrician and then the hospital confirmed what the family feared: the injuries were third-degree chemical burns from pool water with illegally high chlorine levels.
The boy, Ashtyn Douglas, was admitted to the UNC Chapel Hill Burn Center, where he spent a week in the burn unit undergoing debridement procedures. He was later treated at the MUSC Burn Center, where he completed at least five laser sessions in the years following the incident. Doctors told his family the scarring would be permanent.
As the lawsuit advanced toward trial, Kenneth Berger and co-counsel uncovered the full scope of the resort's misconduct. Pool maintenance employee Juan Rivera had falsified the chemical log reports submitted to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control for roughly three and a half years. Rivera was later arrested and charged with forgery. The resort did not terminate him until more than a month after he admitted the falsification during his deposition. A follow-up inspection found chlorine levels at the property still out of compliance three years after the incident.
Berger, representing the Douglas family through Trial Lawyers for Justice, pressed the case in federal court. As the trial date approached in early 2024, Brittain Resorts and its insurance carriers agreed to pay the $26 million policy limits. The pre-trial settlement required approval from a federal judge to ensure the funds would be protected for the child's long-term care.
The settlement was announced January 31, 2024. At that point Ashtyn was seven years old.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Kenneth Berger
All Kenneth Berger proven verdicts →A 21-year-old driver who was overserved at two Spartanburg bars struck and killed two cousins at over 70 mph, leading to a $7.36 million wrongful death settlement paid by the bars and the driver.
Travis Butler, 19, was driving to work in January 2016 when a drunk driver crossed the center line and hit him head-on, leaving him with seven broken bones, a liver laceration and seven surgeries. His dram shop suit against the driver and Hickory Tavern in Columbia settled for $3 million in January 2019. The driver had pleaded guilty to DUI resulting in great bodily injury.
Douglas Mincey, a retired engineer and author, was rear-ended on I-95 in Jasper County in March 2016 by a driver who had been drinking. He had a lower back injury that required several surgeries and concussive symptoms. His underinsured motorist carrier, USAA, agreed to pay $2 million on April 6, 2018, before the case reached the jury roster.
A Navy veteran who was sent home from the Charleston VA with back pain developed a spinal epidural abscess that went untreated for days, leaving him permanently paralyzed in both legs; the Law Office of Kenneth E. Berger recovered a $1 million federal settlement.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.