Lawyers for plaintiffs in wrongful-death suit against Mobile agree it should be dismissed
By Brendan Kirby
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MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — Lawyers for a family suing the city of Mobile over a police raid that turned deadly submitted a court filing Friday agreeing the lawsuit should be dismissed.
The federal wrongful-death lawsuit sought in excess of $5 million for actions the complaint alleged unjustifiably caused the death of Treyh Webster in February 2021. The city had asked a judge to dismiss the suit on a number of grounds, including that the plaintiffs failed to meet deadlines.
Lawyers for the Webster family wrote that the family hired them in December, slightly more than a month before the deadline to file the suit.
“Undersigned counsel endeavored to save these claims which were due to be remedied, but was unable to accomplish all of the procedural necessities required to effectuate a proper suit for these claims,” the filing states.
The lawyers wrote that the plaintiffs will seek relief in a separate lawsuit against other defendants not named in the current suit.
Mobile officials declined to comment.
The raid took place on Feb. 4, 2021, on Lakeview Drive East. The SWAT team went to the house to arrest Webster and his brother, Tyhire Webster, on witness intimidation charges. During the raid, an officer fatally shot Treyh Webster. Police at the time maintained that the officer returned fire after shots came from a back room. The family disagrees.
The civil litigation has followed a twisted path, complicated by a change of lawyers and the death of Treyh’s mother, Georgette Sons, who had been the administrator of the teenager’s estate and representative of a lawsuit filed in federal court in July 2021. But Sons, herself, had died by the time the suit was filed.
The family’s lawyers at the time asked for the suit to be dismissed in light of Sons’ death.
The family’s current lawyers filed the current lawsuit in February and an amended complaint last month. The city’s lawyers argued that the plaintiffs had not property substituted a new administrator of the estate in time to meet the deadline to file the lawsuit. That deadline was Feb. 4, 2023, two years after Webster’s death. The Mobile County Probate Court did not issue letters of administration to the new representative of the estate until March 17, the city noted.
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