Plenty of fuel for lawsuits in campus tragedy
Why Declan Sullivan was allowed to film a football practice in dangerous winds, as well as the condition and maintenance of the tower he fell from, could be crucial questions in potential lawsuits, legal experts said.
The 20-year-old Long Grove native and Notre Dame University junior died Wednesday after a hydraulic scissor lift he was using collapsed on campus.
Naperville attorney Shawn Collins, a Notre Dame graduate, said the university could be facing “a significant legal problem if the young man was doing a job that the university required him to do.
“The question will be, did someone at the university tell he needed to be up there?” asked Collins, whose firm handles personal injury cases. If that's the case, “the university needed to take adequate care to make sure he was protected. I don't know how you can say adequate care was taken here when he was working in a tower so high off the ground in dangerous winds.”
Attorney Terry Ekl, whose Lisle firm practices in accidental death cases, said negligence could play a role in any subsequent litigation.
While noting that there's a lot of information that's missing, Ekl said “when a structure collapses, generally someone is negligent. It's like a plane crash. Whoever designed it, flew it, maintained it someone made a mistake.”
Going forward, it will be important to determine how the tower was built, maintained and used and if someone had control over access, Ekl explained. “There's all kinds of theories about how negligence could apply in a case like this. It's hard to say at this point, since we don't know enough about who had control over the structure.”
Collins pointed out that no one should have been surprised by the high winds after weather forecasts.
“His supervisor should have forbid him to go up on that tower,” Collins said. “Especially, when you're dealing with a student and not a veteran adult employee. Needless to say he was working in an area that gave the school its reputation the football team. The young man may well have been worried if he didn't film the practice, he would be letting the university down.”