The fallout from last year’s holiday drone show mishap at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando has escalated into the courtroom. Earlier this month, Adriana Edgerton, the mother of a 7-year-old boy struck by a malfunctioning drone during the December 21, 2024, performance, filed a sweeping negligence and product liability lawsuit in Orange County Circuit Court against the City of Orlando and four companies tied to the event.
The lawsuit claims Edgerton’s son, identified in filings as A.E., suffered “severe and permanent injuries” to his face and chest when one of the drones veered out of formation, breached safety boundaries, and slammed into him at high speed. According to court documents, the child’s injuries will require long-term medical care and have left him with lasting physical and emotional harm.
Multiple defendants named in lawsuit
The 59-page complaint targets several parties Edgerton alleges share responsibility for the accident:
- City of Orlando: Accused of failing to properly vet and supervise the drone show operator, and of authorizing a high-risk performance over a crowded public park without adequate safety measures.
- Sky Elements: The Texas-based drone show company contracted to run the event. The suit claims Sky Elements used insufficient redundancies, relied on a single pilot to manage a 500-drone fleet, and failed to employ adequate kill-switch protocols or trained spotters.
- UVify (US) and UVify (South Korea): Manufacturers of the drones, which Edgerton says were defectively designed and lacked reliable geofencing, estimator redundancies, and emergency termination systems.
- SPH Engineering (Latvia): Developer of the flight control software that coordinated the drone formations. The lawsuit alleges its program lacked essential safeguards and failed to prevent the flyaway.
Edgerton is seeking compensatory damages for her son’s medical expenses, pain and suffering, disfigurement, disability, and other losses. She has also requested a jury trial.
Drone show tragedy at Lake Eola
The Orlando holiday drone show, organized as a festive family event just days before Christmas, featured 500 UVify IFO drones forming seasonal images in the night sky. But spectators quickly realized something was wrong.
Multiple drones reportedly malfunctioned, breaking formation and straying beyond their designated flight zones. One drone — identified in court filings as “Drone No. 142” — barreled into the crowd and struck Edgerton’s son. Emergency responders treated the child on-site before he was hospitalized with serious injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later opened an investigation, concluding in a January 2025 report that “human error and insufficient redundancy” played a role in the incident. The report also highlighted that the pilot in charge was overseeing the entire 500-drone fleet alone, without a co-pilot — an arrangement experts said was unusual for an operation of that scale.
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Claims against Orlando and Sky Elements
Edgerton’s suit paints a picture of systemic failure at nearly every level of oversight. Against the City of Orlando, she argues officials should have known the risks of staging a dense urban drone show, particularly given prior drone failures reported at other Sky Elements events. The city, she says, failed to require proof of adequate safety protocols or to conduct a reasonable risk assessment of flying hundreds of drones over a popular public park during the holiday season.
For Sky Elements, the accusations go further. The lawsuit says the company neglected to use available industry-standard safety measures such as dual-pilot crews, multiple estimator redundancies, and functional emergency kill-switch systems. It also claims the company ignored red flags from earlier performances where drones had malfunctioned, “including incidents involving crashes, flyaway drones, and deviations from programmed trajectories.”
Defective drones and software allegations
The lawsuit also focuses heavily on the technology itself. According to the filings, UVify’s drones lacked critical safeguards that could have prevented the accident, including accurate geofencing, return-to-home functions, and redundant sensors. Edgerton’s attorneys argue the manufacturer knew of previous failures but continued selling drones without making corrections.
Meanwhile, SPH Engineering, which supplied the flight control software, is accused of failing to design adequate safety features within its system. The complaint points to absent or poorly functioning geofence programming and the lack of a reliable kill-switch to immediately shut down malfunctioning drones.
Together, the alleged hardware and software flaws created what the lawsuit describes as an “unreasonably dangerous condition” for the public.
You can read the complaint in full here:
What’s next
The case now heads toward what could become a high-profile trial. If it proceeds, it may mark one of the most significant legal tests yet of liability in large-scale drone entertainment shows — a field that has grown rapidly in recent years as cities and event organizers turn to drones as alternatives to fireworks.
Attorneys for Edgerton argue the lawsuit is not only about securing compensation for the injured child, but also about setting higher safety expectations in an emerging industry. “This was a foreseeable tragedy,” the complaint asserts, accusing all defendants of failing to implement modern safety technologies that were already widely available at the time.
As drone light shows continue to gain popularity across the United States, this case could have broader implications for how such events are regulated and insured. If the allegations of defective design and insufficient oversight hold up in court, organizers nationwide may face new scrutiny over how they balance dazzling spectacle with public safety.
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