The LaMelo Ball Settlement Is Approved — and Sealed: A Charlotte Judge Signed Off in September 2026 on the Teen Foot-Injury Case That Once Demanded $3.75 Million, but the Amount Stays Secret and There Is Nothing to Claim

The lawsuit accusing LaMelo Ball of driving over a young fan’s foot is over in everything but paperwork. The Charlotte Observer reported on September 16, 2026 that “a judge accepted a settlement agreement behind locked courtroom doors Monday afternoon.” On the sixth floor of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, Judge Troy Stafford “accepted a common motion to seal the settlement and had a Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office deputy escort a Charlotte Observer reporter out of the room.”

What is public is one line: “According to a one-line online docket entry, Stafford approved the amount and terms.” The Observer added that the judge “is expected to soon solidify it with a signed order, which will close the case.” WSOC carried the same report on September 20, 2026 under the headline that the settlement “will be kept secret,” and WFAE confirmed on September 22, 2026 that “no details of the settlement have been made public.” As of October 9, 2026, we have found no public report of the signed closing order and no figure — anyone quoting an exact amount is guessing.

Only the plaintiffs: the boy, now a teenager, and his mother. The amount is sealed. The only numbers on the record are the family’s demands — the 2024 complaint asked for “a sum of over $25,000 in compensatory damages from both Ball and the Hornets,” the standard threshold language for a North Carolina superior-court case, and court papers filed in May 2026 showed the family “last asked Ball for $3.75 million in damages.” A settlement is usually well below a final demand, but nothing public says where this one landed.

The public reports do not say why the settlement went back before a judge in September; the Observer says only that the judge approved the amount and terms. The parties had already resolved it in June: WCNC reported on June 13, 2026 that “the parties reached an agreement through a consent order, and the case was removed from the trial calendar for the week of June 15,” and the Observer reported on June 15, 2026 that the trial court administrator’s office confirmed “the case settled.” How and when the money is paid is part of the sealed terms.

If you landed here searching “lamelo ball settlement” to see whether you can claim: you cannot, and you do not need to. This was an individual personal-injury lawsuit between named parties. There is no class, no settlement fund for the public, no claims administrator, no claim form and no deadline. Fans who attended Hornets events, ticket holders and NBA viewers are not part of it.

If you were hurt in a similar way — struck by a car as a pedestrian, at a stadium exit or anywhere else — your claim is your own and runs on its own clock. Filing deadlines vary by state and are different for children; a local lawyer can tell you which rule applies. Our pedestrian accident settlement calculator shows what drives the value of such a claim.

Because the case is in the news and the amount is secret, expect clickbait and worse. Any email, text, social-media post or website that offers you a share of the LaMelo Ball settlement, asks you to “register” for it, or wants a fee, bank details or your Social Security number to release a payment is not connected to this case. There is no official settlement website. Real class-action payouts come from a court-appointed administrator named in a court notice; this case has none.

Treat “leaked” settlement figures the same way. The Observer, WSOC and WFAE all report that the amount was not disclosed, and the court sealed it. A specific number without a court document behind it is speculation.

According to the lawsuit, the boy and his mother attended the Hornets’ “Purple and Teal Day at the Hive” event at the Spectrum Center on October 7, 2023 and waited by the employee exit hoping for an autograph. The complaint alleged that Ball, stopped at a traffic light, accelerated “suddenly and without warning” and struck the boy, who the family says suffered a broken foot and “debilitating” complex regional pain syndrome. A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report obtained by CNN described a 12-year-old with minor injuries, “bruises/scratches,” logged a “non-criminal incident,” and did not name Ball. The family said they could not file a proper report or insurance claim “because Ball drove away.” Ball denied running over the child’s foot; these are allegations that were never tried.

The suit, filed in May 2024, originally also named the Charlotte Hornets over security and crowd control at the exit; the team was later dismissed. Ball at one point asked the court to throw the case out and make the family pay his attorneys’ fees, and his lawyers sought to split any trial into separate phases for liability, compensatory and punitive damages. Before trial, a judge ordered Ball to stop rescheduling depositions and to disclose what prescription drugs, if any, he was taking at the time. The case settled in June 2026, on the day it was set to go to trial. Ball has since been traded from Charlotte to the Minnesota Timberwolves. A separate Charlotte lawsuit by Agape Property Management Group LLC over rent for an uptown apartment is, according to the Observer, still pending — it has nothing to do with this settlement.