Jury Awards $1.5 Million For Teen's Cardiac Death At Tennis Academy And Splits The Fault Four Ways
After trial: The $1.5 million is the jury's damages finding, not what the defendants owed. The same verdict assigned 46 percent of the fault to the boy's mother, who was the claimant, and 18 percent each to IMG Academies, the physician and the nurse, so under Florida's comparative fault statute the defendants' combined exposure was 54 percent of the award, about $810,000. That is a calculation from the verdict form, not a figure any source reports: the judgment as entered is not in the public record, and neither is any payment. The only appellate record found is IMG Academies' pretrial petition for writ of certiorari, denied without opinion by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal on October 2, 2009, five days before trial began. Two rounds of searching turned up no post-verdict appeal.
Won by Wilkes & Associates, P.A..
A 16-year-old student athlete passed out while exercising on a treadmill at IMG Academies' Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, and died of cardiac arrest. His family sued IMG Academies, the academy's staff physician and its nurse, claiming they failed to adequately monitor and treat his heart condition. After a 15-day trial in Manatee County in October 2009, a jury awarded $1.5 million, $500,000 for past damages and $1,000,000 for future damages, then apportioned fault 18 percent each to IMG Academies, the physician and the nurse, and 46 percent to the boy's mother, who brought the claim. That split cut what the three defendants owed to 54 percent of the award. Attorneys from what was then Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., now Wilkes & Associates, P.A., tried the case for the family.
What happened
A 16-year-old student athlete training at IMG Academies' Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, passed out while exercising on a treadmill and died of cardiac arrest. The academy is a residential program for athletes aiming at professional careers. His family sued in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit in Manatee County, Florida, naming IMG Academies, the parent management company, the academy's staff physician, Dr. Joseph Soler, and its nurse, Carol Tomlinson. The case carried docket numbers 2005-CA-4480 and 2006-CA-700.
The family's case was that the school and its medical staff failed to adequately monitor and treat the boy's heart condition while he went through the academy's daily training program. The defendants denied it and asked the jury to weigh the mother's own conduct, and the verdict form put her on it alongside the three defendants. Both sides called medical experts, including cardiology and emergency medicine witnesses, along with athletic training and physical therapy witnesses from inside and outside the academy.
IMG Academies also took a pretrial ruling up to the Florida Second District Court of Appeal on a petition for writ of certiorari. The court denied the petition on October 2, 2009, five days before jury selection, without a written opinion, in IMG-Academies, LLP v. Estate of Chalita, 18 So. 3d 1046.
Trial ran 15 days, from October 7 to October 22, 2009, before Judge Janette Dunnigan at the Manatee County Judicial Center. Bennie Lazzara Jr., Isaac Ruiz-Carus and Joe Figarotta, then of Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., tried the case for the family. The firm now practices as Wilkes & Associates, P.A. Troy Crotts of Bush Ross, P.A., and Gary Toole and John Reid of Smith Toole & Wiggins, PL, defended.
The jury returned $1.5 million in damages, $500,000 for past losses and $1,000,000 for future losses, then apportioned fault: 18 percent to IMG Academies, 18 percent to Dr. Soler, 18 percent to Nurse Tomlinson, and 46 percent to the boy's mother, who was the claimant. Under Florida's comparative fault statute a claimant's own share of the fault comes off what she can collect, which left the three defendants answerable for 54 percent of the award, about $810,000. Before returning the verdict, the jury sent the court a note asking that IMG Academies set up a scholarship in the boy's name.
No public record shows a post-verdict appeal, a remittitur, the judgment figure the court finally entered, or whether the defendants paid. The pretrial certiorari denial is the only appellate proceeding tied to the case that independent records confirm.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Courtroom View Network, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the October 7-22, 2009 trial: names Benny (Bennie) Lazzara, Isaac Ruiz-Carus and Joe Figarotta of Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. as plaintiff's counsel and Troy Crotts, Gary Toole and John Reid for the defense, and gives the venue (12th Judicial Circuit, Manatee County Judicial Center, Judge Janette Dunnigan), the case numbers, the 15-day trial length, how the boy died (passed out on a treadmill, cardiac arrest), the $1,500,000 verdict with the $500,000 past and $1,000,000 future split, the fault apportionment, the witness list and the jury's scholarship note
- 2.IMG-Academies, LLP v. Estate of Chalita, 18 So. 3d 1046 (Fla. 2d DCA Oct. 2, 2009), No. 2D09-4539, via CourtListener: decision without published opinion, certiorari denied; confirms the caption, the appellate docket number and that the only appellate proceeding on record predates the trial
- 3.Wilkes & Associates, P.A. (firm)
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