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Student Gets $10 Million After Chicken Suit Beatdown

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A former high school student in California has received a gigantic $10.5 million settlement to compensate him for injuries he received from being savagely beaten by the high school football team while wearing a chicken suit.

The bizarre saga of Mitch Carter began nearly six years ago, in December 2010. In order to hype up Bakersfield High School students at a pep rally prior to a football game, Carter dressed up in a chicken suit designed to represent the mascot of a rival school. Carter was supposed to have a mock battle against a person dressed up as Bakersfield’s mascot, but the event spiraled out of control, and Carter was mobbed by more than a dozen people, including several members of the school’s football team, who tackled, punched, and body slammed a helpless Carter.

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Carter ended up in the hospital and suffered brain damage from his injuries. Formerly an honor roll student, he claimed to have poor college grades as well as a host of emotional and memory problems that didn’t exist prior to the attack.

In his lawsuit, Carter’s attorneys accused school officials of creating an unsafe environment by egging on the initial fight, and then not moving quickly enough to stop it once it spiraled out of control.

Instead of being settled in the lawsuit’s early stages, Carter’s case went to a full trial, and on Monday a jury found the school 100 percent liable for his injuries. The finding exposed the school district to a potentially massive payout during the trial’s damages phase, so it quickly negotiated an already large $10.5 million settlement to stop the case in its tracks.

Carter’s attorney Nicholas Rowley, who donned a chicken outfit himself during his closing argument, told The Bakersfield Californian that the final damages likely would have exceeded $45 million if the jury had been allowed to finish its proceedings. Rowley said he chose to settle the case now so that Carter could immediately receive his money rather than having to battle through an appeals process that could take years.

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