Thoughts on this?
“Two documents filed in Hampton County Probate Court in late June show a $1.7 million settlement was approved for individuals whose circumstances match those of Mallory Beach’s parents.
Nowhere in the documents are specific people — the aggrieved, the defendants, even the attorneys who filed the settlement — identified. Everyone involved is described as Jane or John Doe — except the probate judge who signed the order.
But the scant details in the settlement are the same as the circumstances of Beach’s death: the same date of the accident, the same law firm representing the victims, and the same descriptions of the victim’s family. Filed on June 28, the order approving the death settlement states that a female was involved in an accident that resulted in her death on Feb. 24, 2019.
That day, a 17-foot boat allegedly driven by Paul Murdaugh crashed, killing Beach.
The settlement filings were in Hampton County Probate Court, the same county where Beach’s family is suing the Murdaughs in civil court. That civil lawsuit — filed against the Parker’s gas station, Alex Murdaugh and his son, Buster Murdaugh — is still pending.
The law firm representing the Beach family in that case, Gooding & Gooding P.A., is listed as receiving attorney fees and costs in the death settlement documents.
In the settlement documents, Jane Doe filed the petition as mother and personal representative of daughter Jane Roe’s estate. In the Hampton civil lawsuit, Renee Beach, Mallory Beach’s mother, filed the lawsuit as personal representative of her daughter’s estate.
Mark Tinsley, Renee Beach’s lawyer with the firm Gooding & Gooding, said he could not comment on anything his clients did or didn’t do.
He would not say whether the June settlement and the wrongful death lawsuit both stem from the death of Mallory Beach, or whether the unnamed defendants in the settlement are the same defendants who were dropped from the original lawsuit filed by Renee Beach.
“Any settlement in the pending action of the Beach case would have to go through Judge (Daniel) Hall” (the judge overseeing the wrongful death suit), he said. “Anything else that’s happened would be something separate.”
The anonymous wrongful death and survival action settlement was paid from the insurance providers of six anonymous people or parties. Those parties are never identified.
But six parties — Luther’s Rare & Well Done, Kristy Wood, James Wood, Randolph Murdaugh III, Randolph Murdaugh III as Trustee of the Murdaugh Residence Trust 2, and the Murdaugh Residence Trust 2 — were removed as defendants in Renee Beach’s wrongful death suit in 2019."
Hampton County Probate Judge Sheila Odom’s order approving the anonymous settlement, signed June 28, came after the anonymous petitioner and the decedent’s father testified at a hearing. The date of that hearing is not included in the order."
https://account.thestate.com/paywall/subscriber-only?resume=255207221
