Gabby Petito’s family was awarded a $3 million settlement in their wrongful death suit against Brian Laundrie’s estate. Judge Hunter Carroll, a Sarasota County Circuit Judge, ruled in favor of the Petito family on Thursday, November 17.
Patrick Reilly, the Petito family attorney, said that Gabby’s parents lost their daughter and then were robbed of the opportunity to confront her killer. He said that no amount of money would ever compensate the family for the loss of their daughter, whom Brian Laundrie killed.
According to Reilly, the family does not expect the Laundrie estate to have a total of $3 million. The amount was just an arbitrary number, and they would put whatever money Gabby Petito’s parents got into the Gabby Petito Foundation. Gabby’s parents established the foundation after the death of their daughter to help locate missing people and to stop domestic violence.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this year in May, involved the estates of Laundrie and Petito, and it accused Laundrie of being responsible for Petito’s death and claimed that he was liable for damages.
It was also one of several suits filed by the Petito family against the Laundries.
The original lawsuit filed by the Petito family claimed that Brian Laundrie intentionally murdered their daughter, a 22-year-old blogger, who had her whole life ahead of her, during their road trip. The lawsuit said that Petito’s parents, Joseph Petito and Nicole Schmidt, had incurred burial expenses and suffered a massive loss of care, comfort, and probable companionship.
Petito’s parents also filed another separate lawsuit, which is still pending in Sarasota, claiming that Laundrie’s parents had known that their son had murdered Petito and concealed that he had confessed the crime to them before returning home in September 2021. The suit also claimed that the parents knew where Gabby’s body was and were trying to help their son flee the country. The trial will begin in August 2023.
Christopher and Roberto Laundrie denied any of the claims made in the lawsuit.
In the summer of 2021, Petito and Laundrie decided to go on a cross-country trip. They used a white van in their traveling adventure and posted about their travels on their YouTube channel.
During their journey, Gabby suddenly stopped responding to calls and messages from her family. She also stopped posting on social media, and their YouTube channel went quiet. On September 1, 2021, Laundrie drove the van back to his family home in Florida, but Petito was not with him.
Police discovered Petito’s body on September 19 in a National Park in Wyoming. On October 12, the coroner revealed that Petito had died from strangulation.
A court issued an arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie, but he was nowhere to be found. On October 20, police found his remains in a Florida park. According to the police, Laundrie had shot himself and written a note confessing to murdering Petito.
This month, the Petito family filed a $50 million lawsuit against the Moab Police Department in Utah. The lawsuit claims that police officers who stopped Petito and Laundrie after a domestic violence incident between the two should not have let them go. The plaintiffs claim that the police let the two resume the journey even after clear signs of domestic violence and that Petito was in danger.
