Other Spiritual healing, divination, and mediumship Plant-medicine and ceremonial retreat practice Orange County, Florida, USA · 2020

United States: ayahuasca church found liable in $15 million wrongful-death verdict over delayed emergency response

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Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Civil finding

Authority role

operators of a registered ayahuasca church retreat, with facility control over a participant during ceremony

Organization

Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Begley was under the ceremonial and facility authority of Soul Quest's leadership during the ritual; that authority controlled whether and when outside medical help was sought as his condition worsened, and the jury found the delay in doing so caused his death.

Spiritual healing or treatment
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-05-15 · jury verdict (civil)

Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, Orange County, Florida, USA. A Florida jury returned a $15 million wrongful-death verdict against Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church and its majority owner Christopher Young (60% liability; Soul Quest 40%) in a suit brought by the estate of Brandon Begley, who died after an ayahuasca ceremony at the church's Orange County retreat. The jury's negligence theory centered on a delayed call to emergency services as Begley's condition deteriorated during and after the ceremony.

Documented coercion mechanisms

facility control over a participant in an altered state during ceremony, including control over whether and when outside medical help was summoned
a delayed 911 call while the participant's condition deteriorated, attributed at trial to the facilitators' authority over the response to a medical emergency arising inside the ceremony

Cited record

Sources

local news civil verdict WFTV 9 Orlando, report on the $15 million jury verdict against Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church and Christopher Young, May 2024.: Reports the verdict amount, the liability split between Young and Soul Quest, and the delayed-emergency-response negligence theory.
investigative reporting civil verdict Filter Magazine, "Brandon Begley's Family Wins $15M Wrongful Death Suit Against Soul Quest.": Detailed account of the ceremony, the deterioration of Begley's condition, the delayed 911 call, and the trial outcome.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.wftv.com/news/local/jury-judge-order-orange-county-ayahuasca-church-pay-15m-after-mans-death/5ME2OINOU5GPZGJHALKHPFZYA4/ Corpus classification: local-news; evidentiary role: civil-verdict. SHA-256 cdc48b8f904f1c41bc248ca8d220f8cdf9ff8acb15909c6b7041670f5ed3f91a
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://filtermag.org/brandon-begley-soul-quest-wrongful-death/ Corpus classification: investigative-reporting; evidentiary role: civil-verdict. SHA-256 f5006211ce9b936c01d5a84f8beda31ece414459d5caf9c43017c077ff99f19d
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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