Lawyer here. To answer your question, no, they cannot recover scholarship money in a lawsuit. By the time this is all over, your daughter will have already graduated college anyway.

Furthermore, if your daughter was indeed served, get an attorney ASAP. You're going to lose if you don't show up.

But, and I might get blasted for this given the severity of the question posed, but OP's story--given the limited facts provided--is so over the top (including how service was achieved) that I think this post is either (a) missing a lot of material facts and/or (b) is complete bullshit.

First, to the tort itself. Negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) requires the plaintiff to prove three things: (1) that the defendant was negligent; (2) that plaintiff suffered serious harm; and (3) that defendant's negligence was a substantial factor in causing plaintiff's harm. Element 2 could maybe be proven, but I'll be damned if any licensed attorney in the state of California thinks a plaintiff, given these facts, can prove negligence or causation (elements one and three).

Why? California has a notoriously hard bar exam (like a 54% pass rate, compared to most states which are around 75-80%). If you're an idiot, you're not going to pass the CA bar.

Any lawyer learns about negligence in the first six weeks of his or her 1L torts class. Any and every lawyer would know that the older sister wasn't negligent. It's so unbelievably not close that it's barely worth fleshing out, but basic first year torts law states that you don't have a duty to protect others from harm (except in very limited circumstances). And you certainly don't have a duty to rescue somebody who suffered injuries from the intentional tort of a third party.

Thus, on legal grounds alone, no attorney in their right mind would represent them in this case.

But that's not even the biggest red flag here. The legal analysis is one thing, the practical consequences of representing such a client (when so obviously legally wrong) is another.

Put yourself in an attorney's shoes (basically a small business owner): can you imagine the negative publicity from representing the murderer's family? From filing this case in the first place? From putting your name (and your firm's name) on every filing in this case? From being laughed out of court?

Any lawyer that filed this case would lose all respect in his county. Judges and magistrates would absolutely fucking loathe him and, rightly or wrongly, not rule in his favor too often for the rest of his career. Other attorneys in the area wouldn't refer him any clients...ever.

And, of course, any lawyer that took such a piece of shit case would likely be (a) suspended, (b) disbarred, or (c) almost certainly get sued for abuse of process. And I'd bet one of my limbs that the lawyer would get Rule 11'd and pay enormous fines.

And last but not least, OP claims that his surviving daughter was served while taking an exam at college. Beside the fact that it is the third week of June and almost all colleges are done for the year, 97% of service is achieved through regular and/or certified mail. Very rarely do you have to hire a process server to achieve service.

Even if they did need to hire one, the process server almost certainly wouldn't know the daughter's class schedule (they aren't private investigators, they just get names, addresses, work addresses, etc.). The odds of them knowing her addresses but somehow finding out her class schedule and choosing to serve her in an exam building instead of in or at her home is so incredibly small that I'm out of analogies to describe how small the odds of this happening.

Sorry, but unless OP is omitting a ton of facts about the conduct of his older daughter on the night in question, this whole post just wreaks of bullshit and should be the top post in /r/quityourbullshit.

And if OP isn't making this up, go to legal aid. This is so laughably not close that you might have a countersuit on your hands. But again, I doubt this is real. Just my two cents.