$20M settles lawsuit

Local promoter James LeBeau’s event-production firm, LeBeau Inc., has agreed to pay $20 million to settle a claim filed by the wife of a Buffalo-area man who was hit by a car at the 2009 Rochester Airshow.

The one-time stager of Rochester’s Lilac Festival and former manager of Frontier Field, LeBeau Inc., has done business as Beau Productions.

The firm lost the Lilac Festival and Frontier Field contracts in 2012 and 2013 after disgruntled workers hit it with a wage-and-hour class action lawsuit in 2012, and LeBeau later that year agreed to pay workers $74,000 to settle a separate state Department of Labor wage-and-hour complaint.

Prior to the 2009 airshow, the firm had run eight similar events.

In a deposition taken as part of the airshow suit’s pre-trial proceedings, LeBeau described himself as semi-retired. Beau Productions last staged events locally in 2015, promoting a Great American Burger Festival downtown and a lakeside event in Canandaigua.

Beau Productions is inactive, a LeBeau attorney, Jon Lazenby of the Brighton firm Kaman, Berlove, Marafioti, Jacobstein & Goldman LLP, said this week.

Neither he nor LeBeau would comment on the lawsuit or the confidential settlement, Lazenby said.

Only the judgment has been made public. As of Aug. 31, there was no public filing memorializing its satisfaction.

Before LeBeau agreed to the $20 million payment, the case had been wending its way through the courts since the victim’s wife, Kari Ann Full, filed it in May 2010. She was acting as the guardian for her now disabled husband, Shane Full.

Full attorney Steven Cohen of HoganWillig PLLC in Amherst, Erie County, did not respond to a request for comment.

According to witnesses’ descriptions filed as part of the case, the accident occurred on Beach Avenue near Ontario Beach Park, where the 2009 airshow was held. Beach Avenue and other area streets had been fully or partly blocked off and were patrolled heavily by police.

Not sure where he could park after exiting I-390, Full had pulled his truck into a Beach Avenue driveway and crossed the street to ask directions from a group standing there, testified a friend who had traveled from Buffalo with Full and Full’s toddler son to attend the airshow.

In depositions, Full’s passenger and a passing bicyclist who witnessed the accident testified that Full did not appear to have seen the vehicle before it hit him. The driver of the vehicle, a waitress at a nearby Port of Rochester eatery, testified she first became aware of Full when his body hit her windshield.

Full was headed back to his truck at a trot when he was hit, Full’s friend testified. In a detail that later proved unfortunate for LeBeau, a Canadian air team called the Snowbirds was flying low and thunderously overhead in a formation that one witness described as impossible not to have distracted anyone who happened to be in the area.

Thrown through the air into a nearby utility pole, Shane Full is not expected to meaningfully recover and will require full-time care for the rest of his life, Kari Full testified in a 2015 sworn statement.

The questions that would have faced a jury had the case gone to trial were: Who if anyone could be held responsible and what sum might adequately compensate the Fulls?

Court records show the settlement followed a November 2015 ruling by Monroe County state Supreme Court Justice Scott Odorisi that left LeBeau Inc. as the last standing of six initially cited defendants.

In the ruling, Odorisi granted summary judgment to the Monroe County Airport Authority, Monroe County, the Monroe County sheriff, the city of Rochester, the town of Greece and the municipalities’ police agencies.

The municipal defendants had no “legal duty…to control the pilots’ aerial maneuvers or (to) take extra precautions toward Shane Full” and similarly had no duty to control the actions of the driver of the vehicle that hit Full, Odorisi found.

In 2010, the driver’s insurance company paid the Fulls $1.3 million. Court filings show that, as of 2015, much of the cost of Shane Full’s care had been covered by private insurance and Medicaid payments with the Fulls having incurred some $3,500 in out-of-pocket costs.

Stating that having lost her husband’s “services, support, society and companionship” yet still “compelled to provide for his medical care” Kari Full’s 2010 court complaint asks to be awarded unspecified damages from LeBeau Inc. and the defendants Odorisi ultimately excused.

In a deposition, LeBeau testified he believed his airshow responsibilities to have been limited to overseeing a parking lot and a grassy area where attendees could stand to view fly-overs. He had filed no security plan before the event, LeBeau told Kari Full’s lawyers.

“There was no duty to Mr. Full, no breach and no causal relationship between the alleged negligence and the incident itself. (LeBeau Inc.) is not liable,” LeBeau attorney Norman Palmiere of the Palmiere Law firm in Rochester maintained in a filing.

Kari Full’s lawyers disagreed, maintaining that as a for-profit promoter overseeing the event, LeBeau Inc. bore responsibility for attendees’ well-being. At one pre-trial proceeding they asked LeBeau to read a section of LeBeau Inc.’s airshow contract spelling out the firm’s obligation to file a security plan.

A trial had been slated to get underway April 22. LeBeau inked the settlement deal April 18. Odorisi signed a consent order finalizing the agreement on April 26.

9/2/2016 (c) 2016 Rochester Business Journal. To obtain permission to reprint this article, call 585-546-8303 or email [email protected].