Murdaugh Boat Crash Victims Family Settles Lawsuit For $15 Million

The family of Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old woman who was killed when teenager Paul Murdaugh crashed the boat they were riding in into a bridge in 2019, was awarded $15 million in the settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit on Sunday.

Insurance carriers for Greg Parker, the owner of local convenience store Parker’s Kitchen, agreed to settle the lawsuit with the Beach family. Murdaugh, 19 at the time of the crash, allegedly bought alcohol at Parker’s store using his older brother’s ID before he drove drunk  at high speed into the Archers Creek Bridge in Beaufort, South Carolina, on Feb. 24, 2019.

Beach was a passenger in the boat Murdaugh crashed. Her body was found a week later in the river, about five miles from the crash site.

In a statement to HuffPost, Mark Tinsley, the attorney representing the Beach family, said that blaming those onboard the boat that night wouldn’t solve the issue of underage drinking, but said the settlement demonstrates the consequences of selling alcohol to minors. 

“The Beach family believes this settlement will serve as a warning to all the [Parkers] of the world, who might make an illegal sale of alcohol to a minor, that they will be held to account for their wrongful conduct if they do,” the statement read.

After Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie Murdaugh, were found fatally shot in June 2021, questions also arose about the boat crash and how the influential and wealthy Murdaugh family may have tried to protect themselves from legal consequences.

Prosecutors ultimately revealed  that Paul Murdaugh’s father, Alex Murdaugh, feared the Beach family’s wrongful death suit would open his finances up to scrutiny and reveal his extensive financial crimes. It was part of the “perfect storm” of problems that prosecutors say motivated Alex Murdaugh to murder his wife and son.  

The Beach family’s lawsuit against Parker and Alex Murdaugh had been set to go to trial next month, but the settlement has ended the case — meaning Alex Murdaugh will not be deposed as previously scheduled.  

In a statement to HuffPost, Parker’s attorney PK Shere said his client’s store had made a valid sale, as determined by state officials, but that Parker would not been given a fair trial due to the case being tied to Alex Murdaugh.

Shere said that the convenience store’s insurance carrier decided to settle the lawsuit because the business could have been required to pay the full amount of damages, even if a jury found that Paul Murdaugh had been largely to blame for the boat crash.

“This case was never about that legal and valid sale nor was it about the repeated bad decisions that these young adults made that night,” Shere wrote.

Shere added that for Tinsley, the Beach family’s lawyer, “it was all about using the Murdaughs’ bad actions and the unfair law of joint and several liability in South Carolina to make Parker’s pay for a verdict intended to punish the Murdaughs.”