Mallory Beach family settles lawsuit with Buster Murdaugh in fatal boat crash

After months of negotiations, hearings before a probate court and a failed mediation, several defendants in a multi-million dollar lawsuit over the 2019 boat crash death of Mallory Beach have reached a tentative settlement with her family.

The settlement of the wrongful death lawsuit is not yet final. State Judge Daniel Hall will hold a hearing next Thursday, Jan. 19, in Lexington County, where final approval will be discussed, according to Mark Tinsley, attorney for Renee Beach, Mallory Beach’s mother. Probate Judge Leigh Boan must also issue a final approval, Tinsley said.

One major defendant agreeing to settle with the Beach family is Buster Murdaugh, 26. He allegedly allowed his late brother, Paul, to use his driver’s license to buy alcohol on the night of the boat crash, according to the lawsuit. If the settlement is approved, he will be dropped as a defendant in the lawsuit.

A key component of the settlement is the pending sale of the family’s property, Moselle. Under the terms of the settlement, Buster will receive $530,000 from his mother’s estate once the property has been sold.

“The Beach family feels like Buster had suffered enough, and it was important to get Buster out of the lawsuit,” Tinsley said.

Other defendants in the lawsuit who agreed to settle include the estate of Maggie Murdaugh, Buster and Paul’s mother. The lawsuit alleged that Maggie Murdaugh had contributed to Mallory’s death by allowing Paul to drink and pilot the family outboard motorboat. Paul was at the helm of the boat when it crashed into bridge pilings on Archer Creek near Beaufort, according to the lawsuit.

Maggie Murdaugh’s estate is largely made up of the Moselle family property, which is under contract to be sold for $3.9 million, Tinsley said.

But there is already about $2 million in mortgages on that property, and lawyers’ fees for the various parties in the settlement were eating away at much of the remaining $1.9 million as the litigation wore on, Tinsley said.

“We didn’t want it to become like Santiago in the Old Man and the Sea,” said Tinsley, reflecting on Ernest Hemingway’s hero who loses a giant fish to attacking sharks when he is unwilling to let go of his prize. By the time he reaches shore, there is nothing left of the fish but its skeleton.

Settlement of the lawsuit, first filed in March 2019 in Hampton County by Renee Beach a month after her daughter’s death, was complicated by dramatic events.

In June 2021, Maggie and Paul were found shot to death near dog kennels on the Moselle estate. Disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh, Maggie’s husband and Paul’s father, has been charged with murder in their deaths. He goes on trial in Colleton County on Jan. 23.

Alex Murdaugh remains a defendant in the Beach lawsuit. Also remaining a defendant is Greg Parker’s chain of convenience stores, one of which sold the alcohol to Paul that allegedly contributed to the drunken boat crash.

In late 2021, Alex Murdaugh began facing charges in a series of large embezzlements from former clients and others. At Tinsley’s request, all of Alex Murdaugh’s assets — including inheriting Moselle from Maggie — were then put under the control of two lawyer-receivers to make sure that Murdaugh did not improperly transfer any money.

The two lawyer-receivers, Peter McCoy and John T. Lay, signed off on the just-announced Mallory Beach wrongful death settlements, according to court records.

The partial settlement on the eve of Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial wraps up a portion of the sprawling civil litigation that lit the fuse on the Lowcountry legal dynasty’s implosion. It comes as the mounting cost of litigation, with no end in sight, was eating away at the value that could be gained from selling the property.

The proceeds of selling the property, which was held in Maggie Murdaugh’s name, will be used to settle her estate’s legal fees and will be divided among multiple parties. Besides Buster, the parties include his uncle John Marvin Murdaugh, court appointed co-receivers overseeing Alex Murdaugh’s assets and Connor Cook, a survivor of the boat crash.

The remaining balance will go to Mallory Beach’s family and Tinsley’s other two clients, Morgan Doughty and Miley Altman, who were two of the surviving passengers in the boat when it crashed.

The sale of the Moselle property had been tangled up for almost a year in a “Gordian knot” of competing interests and claims, according to settlement documents. The settlement was also complicated by the allegation made by the co-receivers in charge of Murdaugh’s assets that he had “fraudulently conveyed” the property to Maggie in 2016. As part of the settlement, the co-receivers have agreed to dismiss the fraudulent conveyance claim.

The mounting legal fees in the case included $290,000 for lawyers handling Maggie’s estate.

The settlement was also motivated by “current market conditions,” according to documents. It also includes:

▪ $12,305.28 for John Marvin Murdaugh for personal funds that he advanced to the estate.

▪ $6,511.52 to Laura Jones, LLC, a creditor to the estate.

▪ $25,000 to resolve an outstanding creditor claim held by Palmetto State Bank.

▪ $100,000 to Cook, a survivor of the 2019 boat crash, to release a claim he has made against Buster Murdaugh.

▪ $275,000 for the court-appointed receivers’ account.

▪ $290,000 to settle Maggie Murdaugh’s estate’s legal expenses.

John Marvin Murdaugh, who represented the estate, agreed to waive his fee as a gesture of “good faith.”

Maggie’s 2021 Mercedes SUV will be signed over to Tinsley, who is authorized to sell the car and disburse the proceeds to his clients, who include the Beach family. Tinsley said he valued the used vehicle at $75,000.

The sale of the estate “certainly does not accrue to the benefit of Alex Murdaugh,” according to the filed documents.

In agreeing to the settlement now, the parties hope to avoid a drawn out and complex fight, including litigation over whether Murdaugh fraudulently transferred to the property to his wife in 2016.

However, were Murdaugh to be found guilty of murdering his wife, he would be excluded from inheriting any of her estate due to South Carolina’s “slayer statute.”