Murdaugh’s Edisto home can be sold for $955K, but he may never see the money
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2019 Boat Crash Coverage
The crash of a Murdaugh family boat in 2019 killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and started a chain of events that would remain in the news two years later. Here are the stories from that crash.
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A South Carolina judge has tentatively agreed to allow receivers controlling Alex Murdaugh’s assets to sell the Murdaugh family Edisto home, valued at $955,000.
“Give me the appropriate order (to sell the house), and I’ll sign it,” Judge Daniel Hall said Friday during a two-plus hour hearing at the Lexington County courthouse that covered numerous issues arising from a three-year wrongful death lawsuit involving a fatal boat crash in Beaufort County.
At the same time, Hall made it clear to the receivers — lawyers Peter McCoy and John Lay — that money from the sale won’t be distributed to anyone until further decisions are made about who should get the money.
Normally, proceeds from the sale of the Edisto house, jointly owned by Murdaugh and his late wife, Maggie, would go to Murdaugh as the surviving co-owner.
But Murdaugh is a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Renee Beach, the mother of Mallory Beach, 19, who was killed in a 2019 boat crash in a craft believed to be piloted by Murdaugh’s late son, Paul, who was reported to be an intoxicated.
Because of his status as a defendant in the Beach lawsuit, Murdaugh has recently tried to disclaim his interest in the Edisto house. That would normally mean proceeds would then go to Buster Murdaugh’s sole surviving son.
Buster, however, is also a defendant in the Beach lawsuit. As defendants in a wrongful death lawsuit, Murdaugh and Buster stand to be on the hook for millions of dollars should a jury rule against them at any future trial.
Last fall, in response to a motion by Beach’s lawyer Mark Tinsley, the judge placed all of Murdaugh’s current and future assets — including the Edisto house — under the receiver’s control to make sure Murdaugh did not dispose of any property or money before a trial can be held in the Beach lawsuit.
The judge made no decision about the future of the receivership — a topic opposing lawyers clashed over on Friday. The judge indicated he would rule on the receivership by the end of next week.
Murdaugh lawyers Dick Harpootlian and John Tiller said that allowing a receivership to have control over Murdaugh’s assets was unlawful and inappropriate in a wrongful death case.
Hall appointed McCoy and Lay as receivers in November after Beach’s lawyer, Mark Tinsley, told the judge that Murdaugh might be improperly disposing of his assets.
Already, Tiller told the judge, significant settlements have been paid out by various defendants in the Beach wrongful death case, so there’s no need to freeze Murdaugh’s assets.
To allow McCoy and Lay to control Murdaugh’s assets amounts to an “unconstitutional taking,” Tiller said.
Tiller also said that McCoy and Lay have said they have spent 1,600 hours working on the case — an amount of work that implies high legal bills. “How do they get paid? Is it all coming from Mr. Murdaugh? I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
Harpootlian told the judge that no one has produced evidence of any fraud on Murdaugh’s part and if the judge allows the receivers to keep control of Murdaugh’s property, every lawyer in the state will want a court-appointed receiver to freeze civil defendants’ assets in every case. “This order will open up a Pandora’s box to go after every corporation,” Harpootlian said.
But Tinsley, arguing to keep the receiver, argued that no one is being hurt by the receivers’ controlling Murdaugh’s assets.
And having a receiver controlling the sale of Murdaugh’s properties assures there won’t be any sweetheart deals “to sell to friends at half-price.”
Lay told the judge that unravelling Murdaugh’s assets has been a complex undertaking full of “obtuse” and difficult to follow trails.
“We had to expend extraordinary resources to try to get to the bottom of what the actual financial picture of Mr. Murdaugh is,” Lay said.
“We are collecting, preserving, managing, liquidating, selling, administrating,, marshalling all of the assets,” Lay said.
In Friday’s hearing, Lay told the judge that he and co-receiver McCoy are still trying to come up with a complete list of Murdaugh assets. Lay said he is trying to determine what Eddie Smith, a friend of Murdaugh’s, did with more than $2.3 million that Murdaugh gave him in recent years.
And, Lay told the judge that he and McCoy have located a 160-acre tract in Berkeley County that Murdaugh has an interest in. It can be sold for at least $1.6 million.
One issue complicating the receivers’ task was a $4.3 “confession of judgment” signed by Murdaugh acknowledging he stole $4.3 million in insurance proceeds from the sons of his late housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
Despite that confession of judgment — in which Murdaugh admits owing $4.3 million — that doesn’t mean the Satterfield sons will get all of the $4.3 million should Alex’s assets sell for that much. And neither does it mean that the Satterfield sons will have first dibs on Murdaugh assets, lawyers said.
What is important about the confession of judgment, said the Satterfield sons’ lawyer Eric Bland, is that it means the Satterfield sons have received a “full measure of justice” by the official confession.
The two sons have also received settlements totaling more than $7 million from people and individuals involved in Murdaugh’s theft of the $4.3 million, Bland said.
In the lawsuit, Alex and Buster Murdaugh are accused of having enabled Paul to buy the liquor with which he is alleged to have become highly intoxicated the night of the boat crash. Also named as a defendant is Parker’s convenience stores, which is alleged to have illegally sold large quantities of alcohol to Paul the night of the fatal boat crash.
Noting the Beach lawsuit was filed more than three years ago, the judge told lawyers he wants to set Dec. 5 as the date to start the trial.
Friday’s hearing was the latest of dozens of legal events in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Renee Beach, the mother of Mallory Beach, 19, who was killed in a February 2019 boat crash near Parris Island in a boat allegedly piloted by Paul.
The crash, and ensuing lawsuit, caused a chain of events that brought the Murdaugh family from a venerable legal dynasty to a family under scrutiny.
The suit accuses the Alex and Maggie, Paul’s parents, of negligence by enabling his drinking and allowing him to drive the boat and Parker’s convenience stores for selling Paul alcohol while he was underage and using his brother’s ID.
On Thursday, an affidavit by Paul’s ex-girlfriend was filed in the case, laying out how Paul’s parents encouraged and financially supported Paul’s binge drinking for years before the boat crash.
The crash raised questions about the actions of Murdaugh, great-grandson of the founder and partner of the Hampton firm PMPED, interfering with the police investigation and fears from the community his son was getting special treatment. The Murdaugh family ran the top prosecutor’s office for the five-county 14th Judicial Circuit.
Beach’s death was the first of a number of successive shocking incidents over the next few years. Those incidents include last June’s still-unsolved killings of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, at the “Moselle” estate in Colleton County and the discovery last fall of a series of alleged thefts by lawyer Murdaugh and his longtime friend, lawyer Cory Fleming, from clients and associates. This week, the state grand jury indicted former Hampton County banker Russell Laffitte as being part of the alleged Murdaugh-Fleming conspiracy.
Receivership
Friday’s hearing included efforts from lawyers for Murdaugh, now jailed on charges he stole $8.4 million from clients, his law firm, and colleagues, to dissolve the “receivership” put in place by the court to monitor his finances.
Co-receivers Lay, a Columbia lawyer, and McCoy, a former lawmaker and U.S. attorney for South Carolina, were appointed by Hall in November last year after a request from Beach’s lawyer Mark Tinsley.
Tinsley and other lawyers suing Murdaugh feared the suspended lawyer’s assets would all but disappear by the time their cases reached disposition and a decision was to be made if Murdaugh had to pay damages.
Receivers Lay and McCoy were appointed to oversee and investigate Murdaugh’s finances. It’s a move Murdaugh’s lawyers have argued was an overreach and has made it difficult for Murdaugh or his family to pay for things.
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 2:16 PM.
