A total of 86 current and former members of Yale University's Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter are facing lawsuits over a deadly tailgating crash that occurred at a 2011 Yale-Harvard football game, The Associated Press reports.
At the tailgate, a U-Haul truck delivering beer to Sigma Phi Epislon's fraternity tailgating area, driven by fraternity member and Yale student Brendan Ross, hit and killed 30-year-old Nancy Barry of Salem, Mass. and injured two other women.
Since the incident, lawsuits against Ross, which currently remain pending, have been filed by Yale student Sarah Short (one of the women injured in the crash), the national chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon, Yale, and U-Haul, among others. In addition, 86 former and current members of Sigma Phi Epsilon at Yale are facing lawsuits, as the national chapter does not sanction or financially cover such events as tailgating.
"They are effectively cutting off its local chapter and members," Paul Edwards, the lawyer for Barry's estate, told the AP. "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," adding that filing new suits on Dec. 30 was "a move that we were forced to take by the defense and the posturing of the national fraternity's lawyers."
Meanwhile, Jeremy Platek, a lawyer representing almost all of the past and current Yale chapter members, declined to comment Wednesday.
"It's a completely unnecessary effort we've gone through that caused unnecessary agitation to all of the individuals we had to sue and no doubt their families," Short's attorney, Joel Faxon, said of the national chapter claiming no liability in the incident.
Yale University has since banned kegs and certain oversized vehicles from its athletic functions.
