On Friday, July 28, the Court approved the earlier negotiated settlement to the Beach Family for the Wrongful Death of Mallory, and the subsequent personal injury lawsuits filed by the four teens injured in the boat crash (Connor, Anthony, Morgan, and Miley).
In South Carolina, the law governing personal injury lawsuits provides for plaintiffs to recover both actual damages and punitive damages. Punitive damages are essentially punishment with a dollar sign$, intended to discourage and correct the defendant's reckless and negligent behavior, proven by the plaintiff.
Also, I'm aware Parker's Convenience had much support here and on other forums over selling alcohol to Paul, a minor because the store clerk checked Paul's ID. However, the allegations put forth in the lawsuits show Parker's focus on quick and speedy transactions was reckless. In other words, instead of the quick transaction, had the clerk read the ID, it would have been evident the ID presented by Paul actually belonged to Buster-- and was being used because he was underage.
Although the lawsuits did not go to trial, and a settlement was reached by the Insurers for Murdaugh and Parker, the lawsuits by Anthony and Connor Cook, obtained by MSM, alleged the following to support punitive damages.
Nearly three years after he and his girlfriend were thrown from a boat allegedly driven by a "grossly intoxicated" Paul Murdaugh, Anthony Cook has joined the
www.fitsnews.com
12/6/2021
Paul’s ‘Drinking Problem’
Anthony Cook, who was injured in the crash, accuses Murdaugh, the owner of the boat, of negligently entrusting the boat to Paul, who was “known to have dangerous drinking behavior and boating tendencies.”
The lawsuit further asserts that Alex Murdaugh not only knew about his son’s “proclivity” for underage drinking, he was aware that Paul routinely used his older brother’s driver’s license and his mother’s credit card to illegally purchase alcohol and “in turn consume the alcohol to the point of intoxication.”
Alex Murdaugh, the suit says, repeatedly “condoned” his son’s excessive drinking and dangerous driving.
When the crash occurred in 2019, Alex Murdaugh “knew that Paul had a drinking problem” and that Paul was “unfit, incompetent, dangerous and reckless.”
Paul, who was
murdered in June 2021 along with his mother, was facing three felony Boating Under the Influence Charges at the time of his death.
‘Not the First Time’
Before setting out on his father’s boat Feb. 23, 2019, Paul purchased alcohol at Parker’s 55 in Jasper County using the license of his older brother, Buster, who was considerably taller and heavier than Paul.
Cook’s lawsuit says that Parker’s and Cohen, the cashier who sold the alcohol to Paul that day, would have known an illegal alcohol sale was occurring had Cohen followed Parker’s corporate policies, which would have “triggered further inquiry or investigation” into the transaction.
“Any level of reasonable scrutiny engaged in by the Defendants herein would have led to the conclusion that this sale of alcohol should have been refused by Parker’s and Cohen.”
The lawsuit notes that this “was not the first time these Defendants had sold alcohol to an underaged customer” and that Parker’s has also sold alcohol to customers who “were known to be already intoxicated or drunk” in violation of Parker’s corporate policies and the laws of South Carolina.
The suit includes a reference to a 2016 case on Hilton Head Island, in which Parker’s and its employees sold alcohol to an already intoxicated customer who didn’t have an ID.
“Rather than deny the sale, Parker’s and its employees completed the sale of alcohol … by encouraging (the intoxicated customer without an ID) to send in a third party to purchase it for him.”
Once that sale was completed, the customer “drove away from Parker’s and struck a tree at a high rate of speed, resulting in multiple fatalities.”
According to Cook’s lawsuit, Parker’s acknowledged their culpability after they were sued in that case but that they also told the participants in that action that they “really didn’t care much about that lawsuit, and they never made any changes, improvements, modifications, or increased attention to proper employee training and safe alcohol sales policies and procedures.”
Although Parker’s has policies and procedures related to safe alcohol sales, Cook’s suit says, Parker’s “routinely violates” these policies and state law “because they are more concerned with the speed of the customer transaction and the financial profits to be realized from alcohol sales rather than safe and responsible alcohol sales.”
Parker’s emphasis on the speed of sales transactions “is part of a deliberate corporate design that is grounded in a profit motive” and “minimizes or eliminates the opportunity for proper examination of a customer’s eligibility to purchase alcohol, thereby placing the public at large at risk of harm.”
“Turning a blind eye toward these dangers,” the suit says, are “societal problems that cause many unnecessary injuries and deaths every year.”
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