New Jersey Court Awards Fire Ball Ride Survivor Keziah Lewis $20 Million

Opening day of the Ohio State Fair in Columbus was July 26, 2017. That evening, a row of seats on the Fire Ball ride broke loose while the machine swung at full speed with a full load of passengers. Riders were thrown from the gondola and fell to the pavement below. Tyler Jarrell, 18, was killed. Seven other people were hurt.

Keziah Lewis, a University of Cincinnati student at the time, was ejected from her seat. She fractured her pelvis, her ankle, and several ribs, and she was left with a permanent neurological deficit in her right foot. She spent months in the hospital and came through roughly a dozen surgeries. Her medical costs passed $2 million. Jarrell was her boyfriend.

Cooper Elliott filed the case in Somerset County Superior Court in New Jersey, where it was docketed as SOM-L-000737-19 before Judge Robert A. Ballard. The trial team included Rex Elliott, Sean Alto, and Bart Keyes. They presented evidence that KMG, the Dutch company that built the Fire Ball, had logged reports of corrosion and thinning steel inside the ride's support arm years before it failed. The metal had worn so thin that the beam cracked and gave way in mid-swing.

The court found that KMG knew about the defect as early as 2012 and never warned the operators who ran its rides around the country. In 2023 the judge granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on liability. KMG did not appear to defend the damages phase that followed.

After hearing the evidence, the court entered a total judgment of $78 million for four people harmed by the failure. Lewis received $20 million, divided evenly between compensatory and punitive damages. "KMG was aware of the defect in the ride as early as 2012 and failed to alert ride owners nationwide," Sean Alto told reporters after the ruling.

The remaining awards went to Jarrell's estate, which received $17 million, and to two other injured riders, Russell Franks at $22 million and Tamica Gillam Dunlap at $19 million. Each of the four judgments included $10 million in punitive damages against the manufacturer.