Parents of Campbell Hall student killed in the school’s parking lot file wrongful death suit

On Wednesday June 4, 15-year-old Cosmo Silverman was leaving Campbell Hall, closing out his freshman year of high school. As he walked through the parking lot, he was pinned between two SUVs and died of his injuries.

Now, Silverman’s parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Studio City private school on Tuesday, Dec. 30, alleging the school’s parking lot violated safety regulations and the school was “on notice” for these issues, but failed to change pickup protocols until after the ninth grader died.

The suit is seeking damages for negligence, wrongful death and related claims, according to Panish Shea Ravipudi, the law firm representing Silverman’s parents, Adam Silverman and Louise Bonnet. The amount will be determined at trial.

Campbell Hall could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday.

Silverman was walking through what is called the Triangle Parking Lot, which is characterized as dangerous in the complaint, when he was pinned between a Rivian R1S SUV and a Volvo SUV.

Student pickup protocol, combined with the design of the lot, “forced students to negotiate through lines of moving vehicle traffic with no designated pedestrian pathways,” the complaint alleges, describing how prior to Silverman’s death, students would walk through traffic to get to waiting parents or parked cars. Students would cut through a gap in a hedge to enter the parking lot, regularly walking between cars, according to the complaint.

The complaint also alleges the school’s pickup protocol violated part of the California Code of Regulations that requires vehicle traffic patterns to not interfere with foot traffic patterns.

Since Silverman’s death, the school has implemented changes in the lot including adding a fence separating the pickup line from a lawn, pylons separating the fence from the pickup line, a foot pathway directing pedestrians through the parking lot, a stop sign in front of the path and a second fence separating the pickup lane from the through lane and the rest of the parking lot, according to the complaint.

The complaint maintains that if the school had made these changes before June 4, Silverman and other students would not have been walking through traffic and his death may have been averted.

On the day Silverman died, lawyers for his family allege the school employee that typically directed parking lot traffic was not there. The employee was not visible in video footage and another parent present reported the employee was not there, the family’s lawyer said.

According to Tuesday’s complaint, Campbell Hall was aware of the dangers posed by its parking lot and pickup protocol. In the wake of Silverman’s death, multiple parents reached out to his parents to assert that complaints had been lodged with the school about the parking lot. No information about why the lot was not reconfigured until after Silverman was killed has been offered, the family’s lawyer said.

Silverman was “from all accounts, a very kindhearted, creative and special person,” Robert Glassman, the lawyer representing Silverman’s parents, said. Both of his parents are artists, which had a big influence on Silverman, Glassman said.

Silverman was part of an “extraordinarily tight-knit family and they operated as one. Now that Cosmo is not with them, he was the only brother and son, they are broken and it will be impossible to put them back together,” Glassman said.

If this case can “raise awareness of potential dangers in school parking lots up and down the state,” that will be meaningful, Glassman said.