Falling Store Display Fractures a 7-Year-Old's Skull; Premises Case Settles for $9 Million

A heavy merchandise display inside a retail store fell onto a 7-year-old child. There were no witnesses, and the child kept no memory of the moment it happened. The weight of the fixture fractured the child's skull and caused a brain injury serious enough to require emergency surgery, followed by six days in the hospital. Months went by before the child returned to school.

The case was harder than the bare facts suggest. Before the accident, the child already lived with a significant condition tied to lifelong cognitive challenges and was receiving speech therapy under an individualized education program. Post-incident neuropsychological testing showed impairments, but no one had measured the child's abilities before the display came down. That missing baseline gave the defense room to argue that any deficits traced back to the earlier condition rather than the fallen fixture.

Marks & Harrison attorneys Ryan Walker, Joel McClellan, and James McCauley, working with co-counsel Edward Scher of the Law Office of Edward Scher in Richmond, did not rush the filing. They waited several years so the lasting effects of the injury could come into focus as the child grew, then built the liability case from inside the defendant company's own files.

Discovery did most of the work. The display came from a large order used in the company's stores across the country, and the company's records showed it knew the problem. Some of the displays were unstable or had been damaged in shipping. Several had already toppled over. All of them were scheduled for a manufacturer retrofit meant to make them less likely to fail. The store kept this display in service before that retrofit was installed.

The first day set aside for mediation ended with no agreement. Weeks later, with continued help from retired Judge Thomas S. Shadrick, the parties reached a $9 million settlement. Because the matter resolved by agreement rather than a jury verdict, the figure was not subject to remittitur or reduction on appeal. Part of the recovery went into a structured settlement arranged by Ron Feinman of One World Structured Settlement Design. The child's medical bills came to $200,552.03, and the store and the parent company were not publicly identified.

Virginia Lawyers Weekly ranked the recovery the third-largest settlement reported across the state for 2023.