The parents of the children were seeking as much as $1.7 million, according to documents in the court file, but their attorneys did not ask the jury directly for a specific sum. The trial started Monday in Lake County District Court.
“This case is not about money,” plaintiffs lawyer Gary Zadik of Great Falls told the jury in his closing statements Wednesday morning.
The jury did rule the school district was negligent in not attempting to call the parents of one of the boys, Frankie Nicolai III of Pablo. A school attendance clerk attempted to call the mother of the other boy, Justin Benoist of Ronan, evidence showed, but the failure to call Nicolai's father did not lead to the boys' deaths, the jury decided.
“We're satisfied. Basically, that was what we were looking for,” Frank Nicolai, Frankie Nicolai's father, said in reference to the jury finding the school district negligent in not calling him that Friday afternoon.
He said he was almost certain he could have found the boys before they consumed the alcohol had he been notified earlier in the afternoon that they were not in school.
“I had to keep my mouth shut for two years, but we wanted this out in public so that everybody would know,” about the school district's negligence in not making the call, he said.
Other plaintiffs - Norma Lefthand Fox, the mother of Benoist, and Arlene Powell, the mother of Nicolai - had no comment.
“It was a tragedy, and we are deeply saddened by the loss. I support the jury's opinion,” said Ronan School Superintendent Andy Holmlund after the verdict was announced about 2:15 p.m.
Attorneys for the parties said they would have no immediate comment, and individual jurors could not immediately be reached for comment.
Jurors were not polled individually by the plaintiff or defense lawyers after the verdict, so it could not be determined if the verdict was unanimous. Only eight of the 12 members of a jury in a civil case are needed to reach a verdict, unlike a criminal trial, where the jury's decision must be unanimous.
The five-woman, seven-man jury deliberated for about four hours, pausing to eat a lunch in the jury room.
Even the school district essentially agreed that an administrator, Mark Decker, was negligent in failing to make the call he agreed to make after the children's were reported missing from class about 1:30 p.m. that Friday.
But attorneys for Nicolai and Fox had a much bigger burden in proving the inadvertent oversight by a school official led to the boys' deaths, a finding that was needed for a monetary award.
Evidence showed Nicolai and Benoist walked to a friend's home shortly after skipping school, and asked him to go downtown with them. He could not, so they went by themselves. The boys were seen on Round Butte Road near the school and then later going into Lindberg's Drug in Ronan.
Later that evening, a friend from school saw Nicolai and Benoist at the basketball court at Pache Homesites, a tribal housing area where Justin Benoist lived with his mother, older sister and two uncles. The boys were drinking vodka straight out of the half-gallon plastic bottle they had somehow obtained after school. The witness did not report seeing the boys until a week after their deaths.
The boys' parents found out they were missing about 4 p.m., when they did not return home. The parents mounted searches, and Frank Nicolai contacted tribal police that night and the Lake County Sheriff's Office the next day. Fox was in Kalispell and she and one of her brothers started searching about 11 p.m. that night, after she returned home.
The boys' bodies were found by a school friend the next Monday in a stubble field near Pache Homesites. The vodka bottle was lying empty nearby.
Reports of the case created an outcry and considerable soul-searching by agencies and leaders of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, who wondered how such a tragedy could befall people who pride themselves on close relationships within extended families.
Wednesday's verdict is not likely to resolve those questions.
“We were not able to determine who provided the alcohol, primarily due to the inconsistent information we received from numerous people interviewed, including children and relatives of both dead boys,” Lake County Sheriff's Detective Jay Doyle told the jury Tuesday afternoon.
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at jstromnes@missoulian.com
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