A U-Haul truck containing dozens of beer kegs en route to Sigma Phi Epsilon tailgating area outside the Yale Bowl struck three pedestrians, killing 30-year-old Nancy Barry and injuring two other women. Yale student and fraternity member Brendan Ross who was driving the truck, entered a probation program that nulled the criminal charges against him.
Barry's family and one of the injured pedestrians, Yale student Sarah Short, filed lawsuits against Ross, Sigma Phi Epsilon's national chapter, U-Haul, Yale and others, seeking compensation for Barry's death and Short's injuries. The lawsuits filed by both parties remain pending.
The plaintiff's attorneys reported they filed additional lawsuits on Dec. 30 against 86 current and former members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon Yale chapter after the fraternity's national chapter, based in Richmond, Va., and its insurer gave their defense - that the fraternity's national chapter wasn't liable for the Yale chapter's actions, did not in any way sanction the tailgating event at the Yale-Harvard game and its insurance company does not compensate non-fraternity events.
SPE's Yale chapter is a voluntary association, is not incorporated or organized in any legal way and is not insured itself, confirmed Barry's estate lawyer Paul Edwards.
Edwards believed filing the additional lawsuits was "a move that we were forced to take by the defense and the posturing of the national fraternity's lawyers."
"They are effectively cutting off its local chapter and members," the lawyer explained. "I think that defense is bogus. It's our claim that what happened at Yale two years ago was very clearly, definitively and obviously a Sigma Phi Epsilon-sponsored fraternity event."
Jeremy Platek, a lawyer from White Plains, N.Y., representing almost all the former and current Yale chapter members, refused to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.
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