Following a one-day bench trial, Judge Kelly Brooks set damages for $5.97 million for wrongful death and $510,000 for suffering before the mother died at a Waycross hospital a few hours after being shot in the community of Hickox, 4 miles from Nahunta (pop. 1,000).
By Katheryn Tucker
Maura Steedley was 18 and the mother of two children—ages 1 and 2—when she was killed by a shotgun blast in a rural southeast Georgia trailer park nearly nine years ago.
Those children—now 9 and 11—won a $6.48 million judgment Friday in Brantley County Superior Court.
Following a one-day bench trial, Judge Kelly Brooks set damages for $5.97 million for wrongful death and $510,000 for suffering before Steedley died at a Waycross hospital a few hours after being shot in the community of Hickox, 4 miles from the 1,000 population town of Nahunta.
The children’s lawyers from Savage Turner Durham Pinckney & Savage in Savannah said they hoped the verdict would offer a sense of justice.
That may be all, though. The judge assessed 90 percent of the verdict against a teenager who was handling the gun when it fired, hitting Steedley in the side with buckshot. She had just asked him to move it because she thought it was dangerous. It had been standing inside a tire rim leaning against the wall in the corner.
“Like you would place your umbrella,” said Zachary Sprouse of Savage Turner. Sprouse and another associate, Sam Mikell, tried the case with the firm’s co-founder, Brent Savage.
The judge apportioned the other 10 percent to the woman who was leasing the mobile home and who had allowed Steedley to stay there. Neither she nor the teenager were represented by counsel at the bench trial, although they both testified that the shooting was accidental, Sprouse said. And neither had insurance or assets that the lawyers have identified as resources to pay the judgment.
From a financial standpoint, the turning point in the case came three years ago when the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the trial judge in granting summary judgment to the owner of Magnolia Trailer Park, Otis Bohanon.
“That was our most solvent defendant,” Sprouse said.
Wiley Wasden III and Travis Windsor of Brennan Wasden & Painter in Savannah successfully represented the trailer park owner. They could not be reached for comment immediately on the verdict.
In 2015, Court of Appeals Judge John Ellington ruled that the trailer park owner could not be held responsible. To succeed, a premises liability action must prove the owner had a superior knowledge of a hazard and that the injured person had no knowledge, Ellington wrote, with the agreement of then-Chief Judge Herbert Phipps and Judge Carla McMillian.
“A jury might conclude that a loaded shotgun left leaning against the wall in a teenager’s bedroom is a hazard, but there is no evidence in this case that Bohanon knew that such a condition existed,” Ellington wrote.
Sprouse said his firm decided to pursue the case to trial anyway, despite the loss of the only defendant with insurance, for the sake of the children.
“We wanted to give them something,” Sprouse said, “and allow the court to explain that Maura’s life was worth something.”
The trial was the first one for both Sprouse and Mikell. Sprouse graduated from the University of South Carolina law school and passed the bar exam last year. Mikell graduated from the University of Georgia law school and passed the bar in 2016. Sprouse said they believe it might have been the biggest verdict ever in Brantley County.
The trial also offered an opportunity for gun safety education, Sprouse said. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified that a shotgun should be placed in a locked cabinet or case or at least stored out of sight.
Sprouse said the heroes of the story are the great-grandparents, who are now raising the children on a blueberry farm.
law.com
