http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/12/06/28-year-old-avi-sengupta-dies-during-tough-mudder-event-was-company-negligent28-Year-Old Dies During Tough Mudder Event; Was Company Negligent?
A Maryland family is considering a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Tough Mudder, a long-distance, military-style obstacle course that has become hugely popular. Twenty-eight-year-old Avi Sengupta died during a Tough Mudder event.
Sengupta was running the race with five friends from work. When they reached an obstacle that required them to leap from a platform into a pool of muddy water, Sengupta never surfaced.
Eight minutes after he entered the water, he was found. Desperate attempts to revive him were unsuccessful and he was declared brain dead.
It is theorized that a woman who jumped in after Sengupta may have hit him. An autopsy revealed a contusion that could indicate that someone landed on him.
Elliott Woods, a contributor for Outside Magazine who has been following case, told Martha MacCallum that while there’s no doubt that there is an inherent risk in performing such obstacles, the contention here is that the organization didn’t live up to their duty to take care of their paying clients.
In video of the incident, Sengupta’s friends can be heard pleading with a lifeguard to go into the water to look for him. Woods reveals that Sengupta’s friends alerted the lifeguards on shore within 30 seconds of him going in the water. It was two minutes before lifeguards ordered a rescue diver in, and another two minutes before the diver actually got into the water. “By that time, there was about one minute left before major brain damage was going to set in from the drowning,” Woods said.
Lis Wiehl weighed in on the legal aspects of the case saying that a “company cannot avoid liability with gross negligence.” She said the key to the case is determining whether the four minutes it took the diver to enter the water constitute gross negligence.
