Boy with leukemia got sicker after car crash, SC family says. A jury just weighed in
A boy with leukemia got sicker after he was in a car crash, his South Carolina family says.
Now, a jury has awarded his parents $141,000 in damages, according to a state court document filed last month.
“It turned out to be 37 cents a minute” for time they could have spent with their terminally sick child, Attorney Kyle White told The Greenville News.
The decision comes after Jason and Mary Tannery sued a driver they say ran into their family’s car near Charleston in February 2015.
The Tannerys, who live in Oconee County, were away from home so their son could undergo leukemia treatments at the Medical University of South Carolina, according to the lawsuit filed in 2017.
Their child received a bone marrow transplant in November 2014 and got “positive treatment reports up to the time of the accident,” according to the filing.
But the family says trauma from the crash caused their child’s health to get worse. He died about three months later at age 2, The Greenville News reported.
Though the other driver didn’t know about the toddler’s condition, his parents say he was negligent behind the wheel.
Hugo Louis Van Den Bergh was behind the wheel when he didn’t yield and damaged another car, according to the lawsuit.
In the other car, Mary Tannery and her son were “violently propelled,” bringing “immediate fear, soreness and emotional distress,” according to the court filing.
The crash left his parents in “extraordinary emotional distress over concern for their son,” the lawsuit says. Also, the family had to file detailed claims that caused them to lose family time, The Greenville News reports.
