PRINTCoons v. Berry et al.
November 16, 2006 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The girth
The Coons v. Berry et al. case file fills three accordion file folders that, when stacked together, are 10 inches deep.
Related ArticlesThe gist
When Charles Maley, 20, found the body of his 17-year-old girlfriend, Litia Callaway, on the morning of Jan. 13, 2001, he blamed himself. He’d been with her all night while they partied after her high school homecoming dance, drinking and having fun.
When Boone County Medical Examiner Jay Dix conducted the autopsy, he found that she died as the result of “acute ethanol intoxication” — alcohol poisoning — despite evidence that someone had tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Callaway’s mother and stepfather, Tafi and Michael Coons, blamed everyone at the party for their daughter’s death and two years later filed suit against them. They allege in court papers that Callaway’s friends should have called for help when she drank so much that she vomited and passed out. Instead of calling emergency medical services, the Coons claim, the defendants just moved her from place to place, allowing her condition to worsen without any medical help.
The depositions of five defendants indicate that after Callaway drank too much and became sick, her boyfriend and other defendants left the site of the party and took her to Maley’s house. According to his deposition, Maley sat with her in his bathroom, where he washed her face and monitored her condition. He dozed off, and when he awoke at 6:15 a.m., she was cold. He called 911, but it was too late.
Shortly after Callaway’s death, Maley joined the Army; his deployment put the case on hold for two years. He returned recently, and, in the meantime, the case was transferred from Macon County to Boone County in July 2004 after Berry’s mother organized a petition drive to end the case and collected 500 signatures of Macon County residents. The publicity surrounding that effort caused the judge to agree to a change of venue, and now the case is pending in Boone County.
Legal maneuvering and snags along the way have reduced the number of parties on both sides. Litia Callaway’s stepfather dropped out in 2005 because he could not prove he was directly related to her, leaving Tafi Coons as the only plaintiff. The number of defendants narrowed from nine to six; two defendants settled but did not admit guilt, and another defendant died.
According to testimony Maley gave under oath during pretrial proceedings, Callaway was not fond of her stepfather and had complained about seeing him abuse her mother. Her mother had left for Wyoming, where her stepfather found a job after their business in Macon collapsed. From November 2000, Callaway lived in her parents’ house with her close friend, Michelle Talla, and Tafi Coons visited occasionally. Talla was with Callaway the night she died and is listed as a defendant.
“I loved Litia. She was a good girl and very good student,” says Nancy Talla, Michelle Talla’s mother, who had maintained close relations with Litia’s family for more than 10 years. “It is a shame that the girl passed away. She was alone with no parents’ supervision. If her parents were here, she probably wouldn’t have gone to the party; she probably wouldn’t have got drunk because she would have been worried about going back home. But they weren’t here.”
Whether Callaway’s relationship with her family will affect the outcome of the case is going to be an issue during trial, says Michael Fleming, the plaintiff’s attorney. “The parents’ duty to supervise is ultimately a question for the jury.”
The stakes
The plaintiff seeks a minimum of $25,000 from each defendant for her damages and the damages sustained by her daughter. “This case is very emotional for both parents,” Fleming says. “Any time the parents have to bury their child, it hurts.” Nancy Talla disputes that claim. “They just want a windfall financially,” she says. “Are they going to buy a headstone for her daughter with that money? I don’t think so.”
The status
Since filing the case, lawyers have taken pretrial testimony from witnesses trying to figure out what happened the night Callaway died. That evidence has now been presented to the judge by the defendants, who claim they’re not to blame for what happened and shouldn’t be forced to go through a trial. In their motions, the defendants are urging the court to dismiss the case, arguing they had no legal duty to seek medical attention for Callaway because no one believed that she faced any peril beyond a hangover.
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