Va. high court rules on Henrico wrongful-death suit

Parents have a broad duty to assure the welfare of a juvenile guest, even when harm comes to that guest from a third party outside the home.

In a split decision yesterday, the state Supreme Court reinstated and sent back to Henrico County Circuit Court a wrongful-death case in which a 14-year-old guest died in a car crash.

A Henrico judge had ruled that the duty of the parents overseeing the guest did not extend to the circumstances alleged in the suit.

But yesterday's decision, written by Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr., argues that not recognizing a broader duty invites "absurd results" and diminishes liability.

"This decision vindicates what we have been arguing" since December 2006, when Michael H. Kellermann filed suit on behalf of his deceased daughter, said attorney Mark J. Krudys.

Jaimee Elizabeth Kellermann died visiting a former school friend in Henrico in December 2004 after the parents of the friend, according to the suit, failed to keep a promise that Kellermann would not be allowed to ride in a car driven by a juvenile. "No boys with cars," Michael Kellermann had warned, according to the suit.

The suit alleges that the Henrico parents, Paul and Paula McDonough, despite knowledge that a 17-year-old juvenile had a reputation for recklessness, "purposefully instructed or otherwise permitted the girls to go home" with the youth in his car, according to the suit.

The girls met the driver after seeing a movie near Short Pump Town Center.

The carload of teenagers subsequently crashed in Hanover County while traveling at a high rate of speed and slamming into a tree. The collision killed Jaimee.

A suit seeking $15 million in damages filed by Michael Kellermann was dismissed by Henrico Circuit Judge Daniel T. Balfour and then appealed by Kellermann, who resides in the Winston-Salem, N.C., area with his wife.

"They were both overcome with emotion" when they learned of the Supreme Court decision, Krudys said last night.

The Kellermanns had agreed to allow their daughter to visit the McDonoughs, whose daughter was doing poorly and had been a close friend of Jaimee Kellermann before the Kellermanns moved to North Carolina.

Krudys said last night that he expects the case to go to trial sometime next year.

Hassell's opinion did not rule on the facts of the case, only on whether the case should proceed based on the allegations presented in the original suit.

Hassell wrote that if the supervisory duty of parents is not broad enough to cover guests, parents would have no liability even in cases in which children play in the street and are harmed, or in which a death results from children playing with a loaded pistol.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .