Sharif Gray

Case: Charlie Clark v. Grafton School Incorporated and Michelle Yates

Case No.: CL23-574

Court: Winchester Circuit Court (Hon. Alexander R. Iden)

Verdict Date: February 13, 2026

Verdict: $20,000,000 (unanimous)

Plaintiff's Counsel: Zac Grubaugh, Nathan Hittle, Sharif Gray, Gray Broughton, and Lara

Bradshaw (Paralegal) — Gray Broughton PLLC

Defense Counsel: John H. Carstens, Jordan Coyne LLP (Grafton School); Elizabeth S.

Skilling, Harman Claytor Corrigan & Wellman (Michelle Yates)

Special Damages: $0

Plaintiff’s Demand: $6,000,000

Last Defense Offer: $250,000

Summary

On February 13, 2026, a Winchester jury unanimously returned a $20,000,000 verdict in favor of our client, Charlie Clark, against Grafton School Incorporated and its former employee Michelle Yates. The case was tried over five days before the Honorable Alexander R. Iden. We are grateful to our client and his father for trusting us with this case, and we are proud of the result our team was able to achieve together.

The Incident

Charlie Clark was thirteen years old and a patient at Grafton's Berryville Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility when, on December 21, 2022, he was physically grabbed, dragged across a dormitory floor by his clothing — which became wrapped around his head and neck — and shoved alone into a hallway by defendant Michelle Yates, a residential manager at the facility. The incident was captured on the dormitory surveillance video. Hallway surveillance cameras were also operational at the time, and the hallway footage was viewed by a Clarke County Sheriff's Office investigator during the criminal investigation, but Grafton chose not to save it. That footage showed Charlie screaming, seeking help, and attempting to strangle himself with his own shirt. He was alone in that hallway for at least forty-two seconds before another staff member arrived.

Charlie had a significant and well-documented history of trauma, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as a young child, along with multiple prior psychiatric hospitalizations. Grafton and Yates were fully aware of his history, his diagnoses, his triggers, and his propensity for self-harm. Charlie had been entrusted to Grafton's care precisely because of the severity of his needs. His physical injuries from the incident were superficial— treated with a single packet of Neosporin. There were no medical bills, no special damages, and no economic damages of any kind. We presented no expert witness. Charlie's damages were entirely emotional and psychological.

Key Issues at Trial

The case presented several contested issues. The defense aggressively challenged causation and damages, arguing through their retained psychiatric expert, Dr. Cheryl Wills, that the incident had no meaningful impact on Charlie's diagnosis, treatment needs, or prognosis given his extensive pre-existing psychiatric history. Dr. Wills characterized the incident as "relatively minuscule" — "a drop of ice" on an "iceberg" of prior trauma. Grafton's primary liability defense was the scope of employment. Grafton argued that Yates was acting outside the scope of her employment when the incident occurred, which would have insulated the institution from vicarious liability. Notably, Grafton was the only party advancing this position; even Yates' own counsel conceded she was acting within scope.

The defense also raised contributory negligence and self-defense, arguing that Charlie was the aggressor and that Yates was responding to a physical threat from a child who was grabbing at her feet and attempting to cause her to fall.

Trial Strategy

We tried this case as a team — Zac Grubaugh, Nathan Hittle, Gray Broughton, and me in the courtroom, with paralegal Lara Bradshaw handling subpoenas, trial logistics, and keeping the entire operation running behind the scenes. Every member of this team played a critical role, and the verdict reflects the work of all of us. We were also fortunate to have Beau Correll (a good friend and excellent Winchester trial lawyer) serve as an observer for much of the trial.

This case exists because of Gray Broughton. Three other law firms turned Michael Clark away before he found us. Gray was the first attorney willing to see his son as worthy of fighting for. He, Zac, and Lara worked the case up from the beginning, and Gray managed the settlement negotiations from start to finish. He also served as a strategic sounding board throughout the trial.

Zac Grubaugh was the primary attorney on the case. He conducted the direct examinations of both Charlie Clark and his father, Michael Clark, Sr., and delivered the plaintiff's rebuttal closing argument. On cross, he took the defense expert Dr. Cheryl Wills in what was a methodical and devastating examination: he established the standards of a proper forensic evaluation—impartial, objective, complete—and then demonstrated, point by point, that Wills' evaluation met none of them. He established her $700/hour rate, which she billed over 30 hours on the case, that she hadn't interviewed Charlie's current treatment providers, spoke with Charlie himself for only about thirty minutes, and characterized a verbal CPS statement as "traumatizing" while calling the physical incident "minor."

Zac also crossed Grafton COO Kimberly Sanders, turning her testimony about Grafton's proprietary Ukeru de-escalation program into evidence of institutional failure. Sanders confirmed on the stand that the program included specific training on coworker intervention when a colleague is not following protocol, and confirmed that none of those interventions occurred during this incident, despite two other trained staff being present. Zac also handled the crosses of Dr. Julie Lewerenz (video deposition), Ashley Twyman, and Sarah Mitchell.

In the rebuttal closing, Zac reframed the defense's behavioral data (charts showing Charlie's behavior improved post-incident) as evidence that a child who had been dragged by his neck by a caretaker was too scared to act out. He cataloged the layers of Grafton's denial and asked the jury where Grafton's accountability was—the same accountability they market as a core value.

Nathan Hittle delivered the plaintiff's initial closing argument, walking the jury through the instructions and mapping the evidence to each element, giving the jury the legal roadmap they needed after three days of testimony. Nathan handled the direct examination of our key law enforcement witness, Chief Deputy Patricia Putnam, whose testimony was critical to establishing the missing hallway footage narrative. On cross, Nathan took Michelle Yates herself—challenging inconsistencies between her deposition and trial testimony, including her prior claim that Charlie punched her in the chest (not visible on the video), questioning her characterization of dragging a child by the neck as an "escort," and presenting photographs showing bruising on Charlie's arms. He drove the point home: "You were the professional in that room. Your job was to ensure that children were safe." Nathan also crossed Kevin Bacco, John Zeiter, and Seth Peritz.

I handled voir dire, the opening statement, and the jury instruction conference, and I conducted the direct examination of Anthony Bills. On cross, I took the majority of Grafton's fact witnesses: Executive Director Rachel Reader, nurse Leslie Smith, Jeffrey Rittenour, Erin Aubrey-Geoffrion, Daryl Funk, Maxwell Hughes, Matthew Capozzola, Virginia Simmons, and Kelly Musselman.

The case was built around a single theme: trust. We carried that theme through every phase

of the trial. Our first words to the jury in opening were:

“Good morning. Every one of us has been that man in that photo. Every one of us has taken a loved one—be it a child, an elderly parent—and taken them to a school, a treatment center, a nursing home, or a hospital. We did our research. We spoke with the people there. We shook their hands. And ultimately, we trusted that when we walked away—turned away like that man in that photo—that our loved one would be safe.”

“The case that you are going to hear over the next couple of days is about an institution that offered that trust and then broke it. It's about an institution that not only broke that trust, but when asked for accountability, refuses it.”

We called six witnesses in our case-in-chief: Michelle Yates (via deposition clips), Chief Deputy Putnam, Charlie Clark, Michael Clark Sr., Anthony Bills (a family friend), and Grafton's corporate designee (via deposition clips). We then used the defense's own case against them, turning Grafton's corporate witnesses, training materials, promotional videos, and stated core values into evidence of institutional hypocrisy.

The missing hallway footage was one of the most powerful elements of the trial. Through discovery, we established that the hallway cameras were operational. Through Chief Deputy Putnam, we established what the footage showed. And through Grafton's own witnesses, we established that Grafton made the decision not to preserve it. The jury never saw the hallway footage, but they knew what was on it, and they knew who let it be destroyed.

Pretrial Demand and Settlement Posture

Gray handled all negotiations. We demanded the policy limits of $6 million before trial. At the forced judicial settlement conference, the insurance carrier offered $60,000. The week prior to trial, the Defense offered $500,000. During the trial, the defense lowered its offer to $250,000.

The Verdict

The jury deliberated for approximately three hours on the morning of February 13, 2026 and returned a unanimous verdict: $20,000,000 for the plaintiff against both defendants. On polling, all seven jurors confirmed the verdict. The jury found Yates negligent, found her negligence was a proximate cause of the incident, found she was acting within the scope of her employment (rejecting Grafton's central defense), and rejected all affirmative defenses.

After the verdict, several jurors spoke with our team. They told us that multiple jurors had wanted to award significantly more than $20 million and that they had to negotiate down to reach that number. Liability on Michelle Yates was, in their words, "the easiest" part of the deliberation—the real deliberation centered on Grafton's institutional responsibility. That feedback confirmed what we believed throughout: this jury understood the institutional betrayal at the heart of the case, and they wanted to hold Grafton accountable for it.

After the verdict, Grafton COO Kimberly Sanders issued a statement to the Winchester Star offering "deepest apologies to the child and his family for this unacceptable incident," acknowledging that the conduct was "entirely inconsistent with our values and policies." That was the accountability our client and his father asked for from the beginning. It took a $20 million verdict and the courage of seven jurors to get there.

This result belongs to our client, his father, and our entire team. We are honored to have had the opportunity to stand up for Charlie Clark.