When eight acrobats suspended high above the ground at a performance in Rhode Island suddenly came crashing down in May 2014, gasps and screams ripped through the crowd of spectators. In a YouTube video of the episode, one person can be heard asking, “Were they supposed to fall like that?”

They were not.

On Monday, a lawyer for the injured acrobats said his clients had reached a $52.5 million settlement with the owner and operator of the arena where the performance took place.

“That was an amount that everyone on our side thought was the right amount, it was a fair amount and it was the just amount, in our opinion,” the lawyer, Zachary M. Mandell, said in an interview.

The eight performers, who were more than 20 feet up in the air, fell atop a dancer who was on the ground below. All nine were taken to a hospital, according to a statement from Feld Entertainment, which owned the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus.