The convenience store accused of selling Alex Murdaugh’s youngest son beer the night of a fatal boat crash will now be subject to a wrongful death lawsuit, a judge has ruled.
Arrived at Friday in South Carolina, the ruling comes more than four years after a 19-year-old Paul Murdaugh illegally purchased the booze – with his brother’s ID – before a night of boating with several friends, including the late Mallory Beach.
The crash that ensued after an inebriated Paul plowed the boat belonging to his high-powered parents into a bridge at high speeds, killing Beach and hurting others on board.
Beach was 19 at the time time, and the February crash eventually became became a central event in Paul’s father’s high-profile trial, with prosecutors arguing the crash may have fueled his decision to kill his wife and second-born son a few years later.
Apart from the case – which saw the blue-blooded legal scion sentenced to life in prison in March – the crash also resulted in a wrongful death suit against Paul’s older brother Buster, as well as the chain that sold the teen the alcohol, Parker’s Kitchens.
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On Friday, citing surveillance footage that shows Paul purchasing several cases of beer from Parker’s Kitchen employee Tajeeha Cohen, Hall ruled to let a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the Georgia and South Carolina chain to move on
Arrived at Friday in South Carolina, the ruling comes more than four years after a 19-year-old Paul Murdaugh (flanked by his parents illegally purchased the booze with his brother Buster’s ID before a night of boating with several friends
Passengers included the late Mallory Beach, who died after an allegedly inebriated Paul piloted the boat into a bridge. The wrongful death filed by her family naming the store as a defendant is now set to move on
Filed by Beach’s family, both suits have since moved through the Palmetto State legal system slowly – with Murdaugh now serving a life sentence that started in March, and Beach’s parents only reaching a settlement with Buster this past January.
The sum of that settlement was unspecified, but according to sources who spoke to ABC News 4, it was a ‘significant’ amount.
Killed in 2021, Paul never went to trial, but after the ruling from Sixteenth Judicial Judge Daniel D. Hall, that won’t be the case for brass behind Parker’s Kitchen, who run 58 stores throughout coastal Georgia and South Carolina.
Earlier this month, the private-owned company sought to dismiss the Beach family’s suit, filing a motion that that the 18-21-year-old boaters assumed the risks of traveling with a drunken pilot on the night in question.
On Friday, citing surveillance footage that shows Paul purchasing several cases of beer from store employee Tajeeha Cohen, Hall ruled to let the lawsuit move on.
The decision was first reported by Columbia daily newspaper The State, who learned of the development from insiders familiar with the matter.
Hall reportedly aired the decision to the principles in the ongoing legal battle, attorneys employed by Renee Searson Beach and Phillip Harley Beach and the Southern chain that for the past nine years has made the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America.
Copies of the order outlining the rationale for the court’s ruling have yet to be uploaded to the South Carolina’s online public court records system as of Tuesday – four days after the suit was filed.
Attorneys retained by Parker, however, have already issued a scathing response to the jurist’s decision, in which lawyers slammed state officials for not throwing out the lawsuit immediately.
Paul, 19, used his brother’s ID in order for him to buy the alcohol before the crash – something the cashier failed to notice when ringing up the second-born son of disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh on February 13, 2019
Surveillance footage now being used against the private owned chain – which operates 58 stores in South Carolina and Georgia – shows Paul walking off the alcoholic beverage towards a car toting the family boat, which he would then crash into a bridge while allegedly intoxicated
The potentially damning footage shows the teen, who was killed along with mother Margaret in June 2021, physically putting the beverages in the boat. It is believed he was drunk at the time of the accident, which left Beach dead and others on board injured
The speed boat, seen here, was badly damaged during the 2019 crash that killed Beach, which came while Paul was piloting it
Coolers full of beers were seen on the boat. The teens spent the evening at an oyster roast before Paul, ‘already substantially intoxicated and over the protests of several passengers,’ per the suit, ‘steered the boat to a restaurant in Beaufort, where he consumed additional alcohol using his brother’s driving license and the family credit card to make the purchase’
Blood is seen splattered on Murdaugh’s boat after the incident, which became a central event in Paul’s father’s high-profile murder trial after prosecutors agued it motivated him to commit the killings to cover up his financial crimes
‘While we believe summary judgment should have been granted, we remain confident a jury will use their common sense and find that Tajeeha Cohen and Parker’s are not responsible for the death of Mallory Beach,’ Parker’s Kitchen attorney PK Shere wrote in an emailed statement.
Beach’s family, meanwhile, responded to the ruling more favorably, issuing their own statement through their counsel that criticized the store’s motion seeking to toss the lawsuit as being borderline slanderous.
‘Parker’s motion bordered on being frivolous and seems to have been intended to spread a false narrative, so we fully expected the judge to deny it,’ Beach attorney Mark Tinsley said in a statement to Charleston-based ABC affiliate WCIV Friday.
‘We look forward to concluding this matter in August and beginning to give the Beach family some semblance of closure’, the attorneys added of the now inevitable hearing, slated for this summer.
A motion filed by the fast-growing chain – which was in the midst of a $50million expansion when the transaction occurred – sought to shoot down the suit as unfounded, claiming proprietors cannot be strictly liable for selling alcohol to a minor, citing one specific state law.
The law applies in cases where perpetrators produce fake IDs – something Paul was did not do when he used his older brother’s actual state identification to illegally obtain the booze.
In their motion, lawyers retained by the convenience store company cited this fact, arguing the employee who facilitated the sale did not break any state laws by not noticing the ID was not actually Paul’s.
The fateful transaction took place at this Parker’s Kitchens location in Ridgeland. When the crash occurred, the chain was in the midst of a $50 million expansion into nearby Charleston
A motion filed by the fast-growing chain sought to shoot down the suit that slams them as responsible for the 19-year-old girl’s death by arguing that under state law, proprietors cannot be strictly liable for selling alcohol to a minor – an argument that only applies to fake IDs
‘When discussing a commercial vendor’s duty based on alcohol regulatory statutes, the Supreme Court has spoken of these statutes together, clearly establishing that liability may not be considered without [the law’s] knowledge requirement,’ the motion read.
‘[Renee] Beach offers no evidence showing that Parker’s knowingly sold alcohol to an underage Paul Murdaugh.
‘In fact, all of the evidence contradicts any such finding, entitling Parker’s to summary judgment.’
A footnote in the six-page filing laid out the stores’ other central argument – that all of those on board, while not of age to drink alcohol, were all adults and knew what they were getting into when they got into the speedboat with a drunken Paul on February 13, 2019.
‘Notably, the risks assumed here did not “concern the ingestion of alcoholic beverages” by Mallory Beach herself,’ the motion said of what led to the fatal crash, after which those on board said Paul was so inebriated that he was ‘blackout’.
‘The risk at issue was that of riding in a vehicle at night with a plainly drunk pilot.
‘That risk is (1) appreciable by any adult, whether or not they are of legal age to purchase alcohol themselves; and (2) not the kind of risk that an 18-to-20-year-old might fail to appreciate under the policy recognized in [another case].’
That argument, though, failed to sway Judge Hall, who declared that on August 14, brass for Parker’s Kitchen are required to refute the allegations in court if still insisting on their innocence.
Pictured: Paul (right) walking with the group of friends to the yacht on the night of the crash
Prior to Paul’s death, one of the six teens on board the boat testified that they were scared to speak about the Murdagh family because they knew how to ‘cover things up’ – and painted a picture of an inebriated Paul who failed to heed his friends’ warning before recklessly piloting the vessel into a bridge
Witnesses said there was a prevalent culture of drinking alcohol at the Murdaugh estate – where Paul eventually ended up murdered
Both Maggie and Paul were found gunned down at the South Carolina estate in June 2021
Prior to Paul’s death, one of the six teens on board the boat testified that they were scared to speak about the Murdagh family because they knew how to ‘cover things up’ – and painted a picture of an inebriated Paul who failed to heed his friends’ warnning before recklessly piloting the vessel into a bridge.
All of the survivors told the authorities that Murdaugh was drunk – and that there had been heated arguments before the fatal accident over his determination to drive his boat.
On of those was Beach’s boyfriend, Anthony Cook, who testified in the incident’s immediate aftermath he actually offered to get them all an Uber home – but Murdaugh was insistent they would travel by boat despite the fog and a lack of light.
Cook further told attorneys that Murdaugh had a ‘crazy’ alter-ego called ‘Timmy’ – who only came out when he was drunk.
The whole way everybody was fighting and arguing. We drifted around in circles numerous times,’ Cook told officers on the night in question.
‘We idled along….Miley was steady hollering that she had to work the next morning. She was ready to go.
‘All Paul was doing was making a fool of himself…then for some reason Paul acted like he was on drugs or something.
‘He started taking off his clothes during one of the arguments and it is 40 degrees outside.’
According to Cook, Murdaugh stripped ‘all the way down to his boxers’ before crash – all while belligerently refusing to let anyone else drive.
Both Cook and Altman told how Murdaugh, ‘slapped, pushed and spat’ on his girlfriend Doughty as the bitter arguing continued.
Asked if Murdaugh had ever spat on her when he was sober, Doughty replied, ‘No.’ She admitted to having witnessed him smoking weed and taking cocaine on other occasions.
Describing the terrifying scenes as the youngsters begged Murdaugh to let someone else drive, or just take them home, Altman recalled, ‘I yelled at him once and he just told me..he was like..shut the eff up and sit the eff down. Nobody else is driving my boat.’
Doughty told how she and Beach cowered in the boat with their arms ‘intertwined,’ as Murdaugh continued the journey that was doomed to end in such tragedy.
Ultimately, Cook remembered, the boat suddenly took off. In a chilling recollection he said: ‘We went from a two-mile-per-hour idle to the bow of the boat sticking up in the air and I went to the back.’
Family patriarch Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison for wife and son’s deaths in March
Cook pulled Beach down next to him and held on to her but the next thing he knew, he testified, he was ‘waking up’ in the water, grabbing at piles of weed and debris and fighting against the swift current and frigid temperatures.
The survivors then quickly established that nobody could locate Beach. Her body was found a week later.
In January 2023, after months of negotiations, hearings and a failed mediation, ‘several defendants’ including Buster settled with the Beach family and three of the other surviving passengers in the fatal crash.
Three months later, Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering Paul and wife Margaret, marking the close to a sensational case that further dragged the family’s name through the mud.
He is serving two consecutive life sentences.