Lafitte, Louisiana, after Hurricane Ida in 2021.
GRETNA, Louisiana – A state appeals court has refused to throw out a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the daughter of a woman who died in her Jefferson Parish mobile home during Hurricane Ida after her home was hit by a seafood company’s cargo ship.
In a July 29 ruling, a three-judge panel from the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal denied a supervisory writ sought by Royal Seafood and two individual defendants, who argued plaintiff Nora Indovina could not prove that one of the company’s cargo shipping containers struck and destroyed her mother’s home, leading to her death.
Indovina, acting individually and on behalf of the estate of her mother, Emily Boffone, alleges Royal Seafood’s negligence in securing multiple 40‑foot containers next to Boffone’s residence created an unreasonably dangerous condition during the 2021 storm.
According to the court, Boffone lived in a mobile home directly beside Royal Seafood’s property, where the business stored several large cargo containers. Indovina contends that during Hurricane Ida, one or more of the containers floated off their placement, struck the mobile home, knocked it from its foundation and caused it to sink into floodwaters. Boffone was later found dead, pinned under a refrigerator inside the home.
Indovina’s petition alleges the defendants failed to maintain “garde” of the containers, failed to warn neighbors of the risk posed by floating, untethered containers in hurricane conditions, did not secure the property before the storm and effectively abandoned the containers at a time of extreme danger.
Royal Seafood, Liangan Li and Meizhu Zheng moved for summary judgment in December, contending Indovina could not establish causation – specifically, that a container hit the home, displaced it from its foundation and caused it to sink, resulting in Boffone’s death.
In opposing the motion, Indovina relied on an affidavit and report from general contractor expert Michael K.A. Gurtler and an affidavit from Yuhongjian Peng, described as a native Mandarin speaker, to support her argument she can prove causation at trial. Judge E. Adrian Adams of the 24th Judicial District Court denied the defense motion in May.
Reviewing the district court’s ruling de novo, the Fifth Circuit panel cited Louisiana’s summary judgment standard, which requires a showing that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the mover is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. When the moving party does not bear the burden of proof at trial, the court said it must point to an absence of factual support for essential elements of the opponent’s claim. After that, the burden shifts to the non-mover to show a genuine issue of material fact.
The panel said questions of causation are generally reserved for the trier of fact, as is the determination of whether a defect is “unreasonably dangerous,” which involves a risk‑utility balancing test and “a myriad of factual considerations, varying from case to case.”
On the record before it, the court found the defendants had not met their initial burden of demonstrating the absence of genuine issues of material fact or their entitlement to judgment as a matter of law, and it declined to disturb the trial court’s denial of summary judgment.
With the writ application denied, Indovina’s wrongful death, survival and negligence claims against Royal Seafood and the individual defendants remain pending in the 24th Judicial District Court in Jefferson Parish, where the case can proceed through further discovery and toward trial.
The Fifth Circuit panel consisted of Judge Stephen J. Windhorst, Judge Michael P. Mentz and Judge Timothy S. Marcel.
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal case number 26-C-276 (Jefferson Parish case Division G case number 831-992)
