Data from one vehicle's black box showed it was traveling at more than 120 mph at the time of the crash. (Photo: faboi/Shutterstock)
A fatal freeway crash following an Atlanta Braves game last year has led to a $1.5 million insurance policy limits settlement, according to plaintiffs' attorneys Jeb Butler and Tom Giannotti of the Butler Law Firm, who said they believe the cars were racing.
They represented the family of Molly Hall, a 28-year-old actress who was killed in the early morning hours of Oct. 18, 2021, after going out for a night of baseball at Truist Park, Butler said. She was riding in the passenger seat of her own car, a 2012 Hyundai Veloster, being driven by Ryan McDonald, 31, who Butler said was her boyfriend. Their car and a 2017 Ford Mustang driven by Tyshana Forrest, 23, sideswiped each other on I-75 near Mount Paran Road, causing both drivers to lose control, according to the police incident report. The cars bounced into barrier walls on opposite sides of the highway.
Butler said data from the Mustang's "black box" would later show the car's speed exceeded 120 miles per hour just before the crash.
Butler and Giannotti said they found no real assets for compensation beyond insurance, so they made policy limits demands of the drivers, who were both covered by State Farm. They each had $250,000 for injury coverage. One also had a $1 million liability policy. State Farm accepted the settlement demands and paid all three the policy limits, Butler said.
The defense attorneys State Farm retained were Sean Hynes of Downey & Cleveland in Marietta, and Ben Harbin of Waldon Adelman Castilla Hiestand and Prout in Atlanta. They said they did not have comments to add.
"It's a very simple case," Butler said, adding that had the insurance company not met the policy limit demands, he and Giannotti would have sued and sought a much larger amount.
Butler is in a unique position to understand the range of what Georgia juries have awarded for wrongful death. He tried a memorable case in 2015 with his father, Jim Butler, then of Butler Wooten and now a founding partner with Butler Prather. They represented the family of Remi Walden, a 4-year-old boy who died in a burning Jeep after the car was hit from behind. They sued Chrysler, alleging the child died because of an unsafe fuel tank that ruptured on impact and exploded. The jury in the small South Georgia town of Bainbridge returned a verdict of $150 million. The value of the life was set at $120 million. The other $30 million was for pain and suffering.
Decatur County Superior Court Judge Kevin Chason reduced the total award to $40 million, but Chrysler appealed, arguing the Jeep was safe. Chrysler's lead appellate counsel on the case was Thomas Dupree Jr., a Washington, D.C.-based partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Dupree hung his oral argument for granting Chrysler a new trial on the company's objection to his opponent bringing up CEO Sergio Marchionne's $68 million-a-year compensation. Dupree complained to the Supreme Court in oral arguments that Jim Butler wrote the CEO's pay on a "giant" board in front of the jury.
The Georgia Supreme Court ultimately upheld the judgment, and Chrysler paid it with interest in 2018. The total by then exceeded $50 million.
But with this latest settlement, there were no product liability claims or deep pockets. Butler said Giannotti summed up the situation well with these words: "The recovery reflects the availability of insurance coverage and not the full value of the life of the decedent."
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