Miami Kappa Sig hazers lose $12.6 mil verdict

[hoosier]

Fri, Feb. 06, 2004
Jury awards $12.6 million to parents of Indianapolis student in drowning
Associated Press


MIAMI - A jury Friday found two fraternity members liable for $12.6 million in damages in the accidental drowning of a University of Miami student from Indianapolis in what attorneys called a hazing death.

Chad Meredith, 18, drowned in the campus' Lake Osceola on Nov. 5, 2001. He was legally drunk with a blood-alcohol level of 0.13 percent.

The jury ordered Kappa Sigma president Travis Montgomery and another fraternity officer, David May, to pay Meredith's parents $6.3 million each. The parents' attorneys said they would tap the fraternity's insurance to collect the money.

"This was the verdict the family was waiting for desperately," said David Bianchi, the parents' attorney. "This was a needless death in a fraternity hazing event."

Bianchi had asked the jury to issue a $10 million award, but after three hours, the six-member panel came back with a $14 million award. Chad Meredith was found 10 percent responsible, reducing the amount the fraternity member were ordered to pay to $12.6 million.

The defendants said they would appeal.

As Circuit Judge Ronald Friedman read the jury verdict, Montgomery shook his head and bent his head to his knees.

After the judge left the courtroom, Montgomery stood up and lunged toward the plaintiff's table, apparently trying to get at Bianchi, and had to be physically restrained by his defense lawyer and a bailiff.

"This was a case unprecedented in Florida," said defense Donald Hardemon. "There is no law in Florida making fraternities liable in hazing cases."

On the eight-part verdict, the jury determined that both Montgomery and May were acting as fraternity members at the time and place of the incident, both were negligence in exposing Meredith to harm which caused his death, and both failed to make a reasonable effort to help Meredith.

"The Merediths' son shouldn't have died. He was screaming for help and they swam away from him," Bianchi said. "He tried desperately to save himself, he got within 34 feet of the shore, and he drowned in 6 feet 9 inches of water."

The university had banned swimming in the lake, home to alligators as well as American crocodiles, after a student drowned in 1980.