$8.35 Million Settlement for Family of Man Killed in York County Crash After Bars Served Underage Driver
After trial: The case settled before trial and was not appealed. The bars' names and the allocation among the defendants are confidential.
Won by Law Office of Kenneth Berger, Myrtle Beach and Yarborough Applegate Law Firm.
Tristen Hewitt, 22, died after a single-vehicle crash on Cherokee Falls Road in York County, South Carolina, on January 15, 2022. His family sued the driver and the bars that served him. The bars were defaulted when their insurance broker failed to forward the suit, and all claims settled on April 26, 2023.
What happened
On January 15, 2022, Tristen Hewitt, 22, was a passenger in a car driven by his friend Austin Henson in York County, South Carolina. The two had been out at several bars earlier that night, and Henson was underage when the bars served him. They drove to a lookout near the 99 Island Dam while snow fell.
On the way back, Henson was traveling too fast for the conditions on Cherokee Falls Road. He lost control on a bend, left the road and struck a tree. Hewitt suffered a severe brain injury and was placed on life support at a local hospital. Pressure inside his skull kept rising, and he died with his mother, Angelisa Sullivan, at his side. Toxicology showed Henson had a blood alcohol level of 0.11, along with cocaine, a cocaine metabolite and THC. He was arrested on a felony DUI charge.
Hewitt's family brought a wrongful death suit against Henson and against the bars that had served him under South Carolina's dram shop law. The bars were properly served and had ample time to answer. Their insurance broker, however, received the lawsuit and never passed it to the liquor liability carriers. No answer was filed, and an entry of default was made against the bars.
That default changed the posture of the case. The bars faced liability on the dram shop claims with their carriers only then learning of the suit, and the broker's own handling of the papers became part of the dispute. Both the default and the broker's conduct shaped the talks, and a complex series of negotiations followed among the family, the driver, the bars and their insurers.
On April 26, 2023, all claims settled for $8.35 million. The family was represented by David Yarborough and Reynolds Blankenship of Yarborough Applegate in Charleston, together with Kenneth Berger and Brad Lanford of the Law Office of Kenneth Berger in Myrtle Beach. The names of the bars are confidential under the settlement agreement.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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