$104.4 Million Verdict Against Sta-Rite for Boy Held Underwater by Pool Drain Suction

In June 2000, a 14-year-old boy was swimming with friends at the pool of the Village Apartments in North Miami, the complex where his mother lived. The protective grate over the pool's main drain was not secured, and after it came off, the suction of the pool's pump caught his arm and pinned him to the bottom. Adults at the pool pulled at him and could not break the pump's grip. He stayed trapped underwater for roughly twelve minutes before rescuers got into the locked pump room and cut the power. He survived, but with catastrophic brain damage that left him in a permanent vegetative state.

His family settled with the pool's owner and its maintenance company for $7 million, and in September 2001 sued the company that made the pump, Sta-Rite Industries, then a subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corporation. The case, tried by Andrew Haggard, Robert Parks, and Michael Haggard of Haggard, Parks, Haggard and Bologna, the Coral Gables firm now known as The Haggard Law Firm, attacked the pump on two fronts: the design included no device to release the suction or shut the pump off when a drain became blocked, and the company had failed to warn pool owners and swimmers how lethal an uncovered drain could be. Evidence in pool entrapment litigation showed the manufacturer had known of prior suction entrapments and faced a string of earlier lawsuits over similar incidents, some dating back decades.

Trial began on July 21, 2003 in Miami-Dade circuit court, and on August 1 the jury returned a verdict of $104,409,053.20 in compensatory damages, roughly $32.4 million for medical expenses and other economic losses and $72 million for pain and suffering. It was described at the time as the largest single personal injury verdict in Florida history, and Wisconsin Energy had to disclose it to shareholders in an SEC filing within days. The trial court declined to allow a punitive damages claim and denied Sta-Rite's post-verdict motions that fall.

Then the verdict came undone. In December 2004, Florida's Third District Court of Appeal ruled in Sta-Rite Industries v. Levey that the evidence was sufficient to hold Sta-Rite liable on both theories, but reversed the judgment anyway: the trial court had mishandled how fault could be apportioned to the settling pool owner and maintenance company, and the appellate panel called the damages shockingly excessive. The court ordered a new trial on apportionment and damages, and its opinion recorded a grim postscript: the boy had died while the appeal was pending. Rehearing was denied in August 2005, and the Florida Supreme Court declined to take the case that December.

What happened after the remand never entered the public record. No retrial verdict was ever reported, and if the parties resolved the case privately, the terms were never disclosed. What is certain is that the $104.4 million never became a collectible judgment. The case's real legacy ran through the industry instead: it became a fixture in the litigation and advocacy that pushed anti-entrapment standards, safety vacuum release systems, and ultimately federal pool drain legislation, and it made the boy's trial team a national point of contact for families in drain entrapment cases.