Tex McIver, Dani Jo Carter Hit With Wrongful Death Lawsuit
The court-appointed administrator of Diane McIver's estate has authorized the lawsuit against McIver's husband and the sole witness to the shooting.
May 25, 2018 at 12:13 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Daily Report
Patricia “Dani Jo” Carter (Pool photo: Reann Huber/AJC)
The court-appointed administrator of Diane McIver's estate is suing not only her husband, who shot her to death, but also McIver's best friend and sole witness to the shooting.
Estate administrator Mary Margaret Oliver, a Decatur attorney and state representative, authorized the wrongful death suit, which names Diane McIver's husband, former Fisher & Phillips partner “Tex” McIver, and Dani Jo Carter as defendants. The suit was filed on behalf of Diane McIver's estate by Atlanta attorney Robin Frazer Clark on May 15 in DeKalb County State Court.
Oliver was appointed the estate's administrator last July after Tex McIver was charged with his wife's murder.
Tex McIver was sentenced to a parolable life sentence Monday for the 2016 murder of his wife. McIver fatally shot her while he was sitting in the back seat of the couple's SUV as Carter drove them home from a weekend at their 85-acre ranch southeast of Atlanta.
McIver, who earlier had asked his wife to hand him a revolver he kept stored in the SUV's console, fired the single shot through the front passenger seat where Diane McIver was sitting while the SUV was stopped at a traffic light across from Atlanta's Piedmont Park.
Neither Oliver nor Clark could be reached for comment. But last month, attorney Ken Rickert—a trustee for Diane McIver's estate and general counsel to U.S. Enterprises where she was the company president—told The Daily Report the estate was pursuing a claim against Tex McIver's auto insurance policy. Clark confirmed at the time that she was hired to handle that insurance claim.
The suit contends that, after Tex McIver shot his wife, Carter, “instead of stopping and calling 911” drove to Emory University Hospital's emergency room at Tex McIver's direction.
The suit accuses both Tex McIver and Carter of negligence. It contends that Carter owed Diane McIver, “a duty to drive with due care and in a safe manner” and that she allegedly breached that duty.
On Friday, Carter's attorney, C. Lee Davis, said she “was not surprised” the estate filed a wrongful death suit. But, he added, Carter “was shocked to learn that she was being named as a co-defendant with Tex McIver.”
“Being named alongside the man who killed her best friend was not something that she ever imagined, and it is hitting her very hard,” Davis said. “She thought that,once the trial was over, she could try to put all this behind her and try to rebuild her life, but unfortunately, it looks like her ordeal is not over at all.”
Read the lawsuit:
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