WALHALLA — An Oconee County jury’s $1 award to a young girl and her parents for their loss as a result of a mold-related case against the School District of Oconee County is being used by their attorney as grounds for a new trial.
Attorney Lawton McIntosh lashed out against the jury’s verdict as “grossly inadequate” in asking trial judge J.C. Nicholson for a new trial in a legal brief filed this week on behalf of Cathy and Karl Lowrey and their daughter, Ashley.
McIntosh said the $1 award “shocks the conscience,” adding that delivering such an amount in light of the evidence “was the result of passion, caprice, prejudice, partiality, corruption or some other improper motive.”
The legal action comes as Judge Cordell Maddox prepares to hear arguments Tuesday for a new trial in another mold case against the School District.
After a weeklong trial in the Lowrey case, which included testimony from school officials, teachers, doctors, and some expert witnesses on videotape who charged about $750 an hour for their time, the jury delivered a split decision in the case. First, the jury found in favor of the School District with regards to premises liability, but then turned around and found in favor of the Lowrey family for their loss of consortium.
Initially, the jury gave the Lowrey family nothing for their loss. However, Judge Nicholson said they had to come up with a dollar amount and sent them back to deliberate. They took about half an hour to come back with $1.
The Lowrey family alleged in their lawsuit that Ashley became sick while attending the mold-infested block building at Keowee Elementary School during the 2003-04 school year.
In asking for a new trial, McIntosh also argued that after finding loss of consortium, the jury’s $1 award “was inadequate, inconsistent and incomplete.” Furthermore, the attorney claims that by implication, the jury’s loss of consortium verdict necessarily concludes that Ashley sustained injury as a result of the School District’s alleged gross negligence.
In Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Maddox will hear a request for a new trial from both the School District’s attorney and the attorney of a family that sought damages for their daughter’s mold-related respiratory illnesses.
In that trial held in June, the jury found the School District was grossly negligent, but decided not to award Jordan Johnson or her parents, Robert and Jeanne Johnson, any money.
Attorneys for both sides claim the jury’s decision in June did not make sense.
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August 25, 2007
10:31 a.m.Report inappropriate content
What this is really all about is a slap in the face to poor people who get sick in neglected, substandard schools, apartments and badly built cheaply made homes. The powers that be have made a conscious decision to force people to subsidize their often work-free lifestyles with their blood and health.
Mold isn't an allergy. It CAUSES allergy. Toxinogenic molds cause massive, systemic inflammation that can ruin your health. It kills cells all over the body, including the brain, by depriving them of blood because of inflammation and many other methods. Mold neurotoxicity is much like closed head injury. It can ruin your short term memory and executive function. It can wreck your ability to think quickly. It can destroy your ability to do math. It's a scourge and disaster for the health of poor people and tolerating this health disaster must be stopped.
Molds produce trichothecene, ochratoxin, aflatoxin, and tremerogenic mycotoxins that can act as permanent inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase, causing dementia. They can kill neural stem cells in the brain causing an end to hippocampal neurogenesis. (chemo brain) which causes ADD-like syymptoms as well as depression and may last for the rst of ones life. It damages the immune system permananently, making people hypersensitive to mold and then unable to find housing that they can tolerate or jobs that they can hold because they get sick unpredictably when exposed to mold. It can cause premature dementia because of massive inflammation and induction of TNF-alpha and IL-6
August 26, 2007
6:07 p.m.Report inappropriate content
This $1 verdict just goes to show that there are people out there who truly do not understand how mold can affect a person. I'd be ashamed to admit that I was a juror on the case. It's nothing but a slap in the face!!