Jesse Scheckner
One day after its Senate companion cleared its final committee stop, a House bill allowing Miami Beach to pay the sizable balance of a wrongful death settlement is also headed for a floor vote.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously for HB 6519, which would authorize Miami Beach to pay $1.7 million to the family of Peniel “P.J. Janvier, a 28-year-old city employee who drowned in a community pool last year.
Miami Republican Rep. Juan Porras, the measure’s sponsor in the House, presented the bill to the panel Wednesday, but kept his comments short. The bill received nothing but “yes” votes in the chamber.
Its upper-chamber analog (SB 14) by Miami Gardens Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones fared nearly as well; only Pensacola Republican Sen. Don Gaetz voted against the measure.
HB 6519 is known as a claims bill, a special classification of legislation intended to compensate a person or entity for injury or loss due to the negligence or error of a public officer or agency.
Claims bills arise when the damages a claimant seeks are above the thresholds set in Florida’s sovereign immunity law, which today caps payouts at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.
The latter sum is what Janvier’s family has received since May 2024, when the Miami Beach City Commission approved a $2 million settlement.
Janvier, an Army Reserve member and recreation leader with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, was visiting kids he oversaw during Summer camp on Aug. 16, 2022, at the Scott Rakow Youth Center’s outdoor pool.
Video footage recorded Janvier being pushed by a camper into the pool’s deep end. He struggled for 12 minutes as kids tried to save him and a lifeguard on duty was transfixed with his phone.
Miami Beach later suspended two employees and fired a third over the incident and agreed to pay Janvier’s family, who have only seen $300,000 of the agreed-to sum. Janvier’s LinkedIn page features a work history indicative of a civically engaged young man who enjoyed working with people. He worked as an activities coordinator for the Pompano Health and Rehabilitation Center before becoming a youth recreation specialist with Miami-Dade County, a job he parlayed into his recreation leader post with the city that he’d held for three years before his death.
He was also close to marking three years working as a sanitation inspector for the city of Miami and was nearing six years with the Army Reserve, where he was a heavy equipment operator.
His LinkedIn page says he held a master’s degree in health services administration and a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Florida International University.
