Duval County Awards Mother $21 Million After Infant Dies in Hot Daycare Van
After trial: The insurer, Markel, denied coverage, and a federal breach-of-contract case over the judgment settled in March 2024 and was dismissed with prejudice on undisclosed terms. We could not confirm how much of the award has been paid.
Won by Pajcic & Pajcic.
A 4-month-old girl died in May 2019 after being left about five hours in a hot van outside a Jacksonville preschool, and the owner later pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter. In January 2022 a Duval County jury awarded her mother $21 million in a wrongful death case against the preschool. The insurer denied coverage, and the resulting federal coverage case settled on undisclosed terms in 2024.
What happened
On May 22, 2019, a 4-month-old girl was taken by van to Ewing's Love & Hope Preschool & Academy on Lenox Avenue on Jacksonville's Westside. The van reached the center at about 8:25 a.m. The infant stayed strapped in her child safety seat inside it, and nobody noticed. Temperatures that day reached about 91 degrees, and the vehicle had no ventilation or working air conditioning.
She remained there for roughly five hours. Staff found her only after her mother called around 1 p.m. to ask about picking her up. The baby was unresponsive when she was found. Firefighters could not revive her, and she died at Wolfson Children's Hospital.
Darryl Ewing, the co-owner of the preschool and the van's driver, had not logged the infant on the required driver's log. It recorded only her siblings as passengers. In 2021 he pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child. A judge sentenced him to three years of house arrest followed by 18 years of probation, with weekends in jail each year on the anniversary of the girl's death, 500 hours of community service, and a bar from working in child care.
The child's mother then brought a wrongful death case in Duval County circuit court against the preschool. Pajcic & Pajcic represented the family. In January 2022, the case ended with a $21 million award for the mother. Some outlets have reported the figure as $21.6 million, but the local station that followed the case from the start gives it as $21 million, and that is the figure used here.
The result then moved into a fight over who would pay it. The preschool's insurer, Markel Insurance Company, said the policy had been cancelled for unpaid premiums on May 6, 2019, sixteen days before the child died, and that it owed nothing. On November 30, 2022, a breach-of-contract suit was filed against Markel in the federal court for the Middle District of Florida in the names of the preschool and its owner, attaching the verdict and final judgment and arguing that the premiums had been paid through November 2019. Markel answered and counterclaimed, and both sides moved for summary judgment in early 2024.
Before the court ruled, the parties reported a settlement in March 2024, and the federal case was dismissed with prejudice in April 2024. The terms were not made public, so we could not confirm how much of the award has been paid.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Atlanta Black Star, 'Family of 4-Month-Old Baby Who Died in Hot Daycare Van Faces Delay in $21M Lawsuit Award', Jan. 4, 2023·Archived copy
- 2.News4JAX, 'Family of 4-month-old who died in hot day care van files new lawsuit after insurance company said it's not liable', Jan. 5, 2023·Archived copy
- 3.News4JAX, 'Driver of day care van where baby died sentenced to house arrest', Apr. 20, 2021·Archived copy
- 4.U.S. District Court, M.D. Fla., Ewing's Love & Hope Preschool & Academy, Inc. v. Markel Insurance Company, No. 3:22-cv-01314
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