I can't imagine what could be in water to make palms go like that. It looks dead, as though it's lost its root system. Something else has happened to it other than just being watered. I have two clumps of these that are a few years old and they've never had this problem. Can you recall anything else that might have happened to them?

Lady palms have lots of pluses BUT they are not very tolerant of dry conditions and often don't show water stress until it's too late. Did you let them get dry or too hot and sunny?

Some were in very moist soil, 1 was bone dry when I brought them home. I did nothing to them aside from water them. I'm going to try and replace the soil.

tropicalbreeze, do you use regular potting soil on yours or a different mix?

Mine are in the ground outside. While they were in pots it was ordinary free draining potting mix with slow release fertiliser.

Now when you say "them", you got more than one pot of them? Did it happen to all of them, or just the one that was "bone dry"? So maybe lack of water and too hot in the car. If you stopped somewhere on the way home, a locked car in the sun gets very hot.

They're very slow growing so it could take a while to show if they're recovering. The collapsed leaves most probably won't recover.

Do you think if I repot them, they could bounce back eventually? or are they dead now with no chance of survival?

Yes, I bought 3. The moist and bone dry ones are behaving the same. I know what you're talking about with the car, but that didn't happen here.

Ok, I have miracle grow at home, I'll just repot them with that.

Those leaves most probably won't bounce back, it'll have to be new leaves.And those will take some time to show so it's a long waiting game.

Your plants seem quite small. I see them sold as plants about 1 metre tall for about $28 here. About 20 to 30 centimetres tall they're about $10 to $12. So they're reasonably cheap to replace.