The School's After-School Run Club Routed Six-Year-Olds Through the Carpool Lane While Parents' Cars Were Moving.
After trial: This is a verdict and not a recovery, and its post-trial path is unresolved. Plaintiffs' counsel said publicly that he expected the school and its insurers to appeal. No appellate opinion, JNOV or remittitur has been located and there is no evidence of collection. Two things make the number worth reading cautiously. Louisiana appellate courts review general damages de novo on the record and remit them routinely, and in a case in this state a $155 million general-damages award was cut to $40 million on exactly that basis. And the defence structure here is a school plus three separate layers of insurer, each separately represented, which makes collectability a live question at this figure. The Archdiocese of New Orleans was not a defendant in this case.
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 programme 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 recognises 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.
- 1.Louisiana Jury Verdict Reporter, December 2024: Savoie v. Our Lady of Lourdes, No. 23-16933, St. Tammany Parish, Judge Reginald T. Badeaux III, verdict dated 11-8-24, and the counsel line naming Frank J. Swarr and Benjamin D. Rumpf of Landry & Swarr, New Orleans, with Jones Walker for the school and separate counsel for American Alternative Insurance, Gemini Insurance and Lloyd's Underwriters
- 2.WWL-TV: the St. Tammany Parish judgment for the parents of the Slidell 6-year-old struck by a car, including plaintiffs' counsel's expectation that the school and its insurers would appeal
- 3.Wire coverage of the $129 million award to one family, with the per-claimant breakdown across the girl's survival claim, her brother's bystander distress and each parent's wrongful-death claim
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