Published December 10, 2008

As a legal matter, a tragedy that ended two young lives in Westmore more than four years ago has finally been resolved.

The families of the two dead boys, Norman Woolard and Philip Leno, have settled with the driver of the car that killed them, his mother, and their insurance company for an undisclosed amount of cash.

The lawsuit itself lasted more than two years in U.S. District Court in Burlington.  The pretrial maneuvering was complex, often bitter, and massive, with a total of 300 motions, claims and counterclaims in the file.

But it ended quietly in the course of a one-day mediation session on December 1.  Judge William Sessions dismissed the case on December 3.

Lawyers for the families of the two youths declined to say how much they would receive in the settlement.

And Marc Heath, attorney for the young driver, Charles Meyer, and his mother, Julie Jensen, said he would honor the request of one of the families that the amount remain confidential.

Mr. Heath did say, however, that the entire settlement would be covered by Ms. Jensen’s insurance company, State Farm Insurance.

“We are pleased that Ms. Jensen did not make any contribution out of her own pocket,” Mr. Heath said.  On the other hand, he said of the boys’ families, “they are very well compensated.”

In a letter he sent to Ms. Jensen after the fatal accident but before the lawsuit was filed, Vince Illuzzi, attorney for Norman Woolard’s family, told her he had researched her insurance coverage.  He said he had learned that, in addition to her standard automotive coverage of $500,000, she had a “personal liability umbrella policy” for an additional $2-million.

“I believe you are underinsured,” Mr. Illuzzi wrote at the time.

The letter only became part of the lawsuit when Mr. Heath filed it as an exhibit to demonstrate “the tenor of bullying and hostility surrounding this case from its inception.”

Charles Meyer was 14 years old in August 2004 when he drove his powerful vintage sports car into the ledges along Route 5A.  Norman Woolard and Philip Leno were his passengers.

Phil Leno was 17, a student at Lake Region Union High School.  He left his parents, Paul and Elaine, a brother Tyler, and his cat Little.  According to his brief obituary, “He enjoyed playing basketball, video games and hanging out with his friends. He was looking forward to the start of school and graduation in the spring.”

Norman Woolard, 16, was a year behind his friend at Lake Region. He left his mother and stepfather, Elaine and Bill Cashin, and five brothers and sisters. “He enjoyed four-wheeling, waterskiing, and hunting and fishing,” his obituary read. “Norman enjoyed making people laugh through his jokes and impersonations as he always had a smile.”

Mr. Meyer and his mother were summer people with an extensive seasonal home in Brownington.  A wealthy widow, Ms. Jensen had quietly been giving modest sums of money to a wide variety of local libraries and community organizations through a charity she named after her sons, the Chasdrew Fund.

The tragedy had social overtones that were not lost on the lawyers who represented the dead boys’ families — lawyers whose private and public lives are seldom very far apart.

Mr. Illuzzi, the Woolards’ lawyer, is a state senator and the elected part-time State’s Attorney in Essex County.  The Lenos were represented by Duncan Kilmartin, a conservative state representative from Newport.

In their legal filings, both were quick to point to Ms. Jensen as the real villain in the story.  Buying so exotic a vehicle for such a young man and letting him drive away with an unknown teenager, Mr. Woolard, behind the wheel, the lawyers argued in court documents, amounted to something very close to criminal misconduct.

In the civil case, they argued that her behavior deserved an award of punitive damages to the families — damages that might go far beyond any compensation for the actual harm done.

Lawyers for Ms. Jensen urged Judge Sessions to rule out punitive damages before the case went before a jury.  There was, they argued, no evidence of the sort of malice towards the two boys that would justify punitive damages.

In his first attempt at arbitration — formally “early neutral evaluation” — Burlington attorney James Spink identified punitive damages as the key issue in the case.  A pretrial settlement had proved impossible to reach, he reported in November 2006.  But if the issue of punitive damages could be resolved, he added, it would be worth trying again.  His report proved to be prophetic.

After a hearing in Burlington in December 2006, Judge Sessions ruled out punitive damages against Ms. Jensen.  But, noting that witnesses said they had seen him racing through Westmore at 100 miles an hour, the judge said punitive damages against Mr. Meyer might be a matter for the jury to decide.

The issue of punitive damages proved so complex that Judge Sessions, finding no useful precedent in Vermont law, sent the question to the Vermont Supreme Court.  The matter was argued earlier this year, but the high court has yet to rule.

The problem for the families’ attorneys, Mr. Heath said in an interview Tuesday, is that Charles Meyer is a minor, “with no assets to speak of.”  A very large award, like the $5-million per boy Mr. Illuzzi mentioned in his first letter to Ms. Jensen, would require winning punitive damages from her.

Mr. Illuzzi asked the judge to reconsider his ruling last summer, offering new evidence that she had been warned that the car was too dangerous for her son to drive.

But at a hearing on November 6, Judge Sessions once again ruled out any punitive damages against Ms. Jensen.

He also turned down a motion for more time, and set the trial for early March 2009.

The two sides met again with Mr. Spink on December 1 and settled the case.

In a brief interview Tuesday, Mr. Illuzzi said he was pleased with the outcome.  “Any time you settle a case between the parties, that’s positive,” he said.

If the case had gone to trial, he added, “we felt very confident that we would have not only succeeded, but obtained a substantial judgment against Ms. Jensen.”

Mr. Kilmartin had no comment “other than to say the case was settled on terms satisfactory to the clients.”

“This was a tragedy,” Mr. Kilmartin said.  “The level of culpability was very high, and that’s reflected in the settlement.”