$129 Million Verdict for 6-Year-Old Killed in School Parking Lot After Run Club Crossed the Carpool Lane
After trial: This is a verdict, not a recovery. Plaintiffs' counsel expected the school and its insurers to appeal, and no appellate opinion, JNOV or remittitur has been located.
Won by Landry & Swarr, L.L.C..
A 6-year-old girl was killed in the parking lot of a Slidell Catholic school. The school's after-school Run Club sent children as young as six along a route that crossed the afternoon carpool lane while cars were moving. Her 10-year-old brother watched it happen.
What happened
On February 23, 2022 a 6-year-old girl was killed in the parking lot of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Slidell, Louisiana.
The school ran an after-school program called Run Club. Children as young as six ran a route that took them through the afternoon carpool lane, and it ran while parents' cars were moving through that lane.
She was struck by a vehicle in the carpool lane and killed. Her 10-year-old brother saw it.
The case against the school was not that a driver was careless. The driver was voluntarily dismissed before trial. It was that the school had no adequate traffic-safety controls for its carpool line and had designed a programme that routed young children into live traffic, and the jury found it negligent on four separate grounds.
On November 8, 2024 the St. Tammany Parish jury returned $129,000,000. The award was apportioned rather than lumped: roughly $29 million for the girl's own conscious pain and suffering, roughly $50 million for her brother's bystander emotional distress, and roughly $25 million to each parent for wrongful death. It was reported as a national record for a general-damages award.
The brother's award being the largest single component is unusual and worth understanding. Louisiana recognizes a bystander claim for someone who witnesses an injury to a close family member, and a jury that watched a 10-year-old describe seeing his sister killed valued that at more than either parent's loss.
Brent and Amy Savoie and their surviving son were represented by Frank J. Swarr and Benjamin D. Rumph of Landry and Swarr in New Orleans. The girl is not named here because she was a child.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Landry & Swarr, L.L.C.
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James Leoma Gaddy worked as a chemical engineer at Ethyl Corporation's Baton Rouge plant from 1955 until about 1960, after earlier summer work at an International Paper mill. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in July 2018 and died before his case reached trial, and his children continued the suit as his statutory survivors. A federal jury in New Orleans found Ethyl negligent and strictly liable in November 2019, awarding $7,500,000 in general damages plus $250,661.45 in medical expenses, and the judgment entered against Ethyl was one third of that total after credit for the shares of the settling defendants. The district court found the general damages excessive and remitted them to $3,000,000, bringing the award to $3,250,661.45, of which Ethyl's one-third share is $1,083,553.82. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment in full in December 2020.
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