John and Will took the elevator down in Will's apartment building.

The elevator shook and John remembered that he forgot his wallet.
John got out of the elevator, at the lobby, and got his wallet.
When John re-entered the elevator it shook and stopped.
Neither John nor Will did any thing to cause the elevator to get stuck. The
elevator got stuck because of a malfunctioning part.

John had a little secret. He was claustrophobic. While stuck in the elevator,
he started to scream etc. Nobody heard. John opened the elevator doors and
the 2 guys discovered they were in between the 10th and 11th floor. There
was no way that they could get out.

After 20 minutes of being stuck between the 10th and 11th floor, they heard a
securtity guard. They told the guard where they were- and the guard
allegedly* told them how to open the 10th floor door by using a method that
is not usually known to the public. ( they claim that they did not know how
to do it and would not have been able to open the door unless the guard told
them).

From inside the elevator cab, by laying down on the floor, they could easily
see out onto the 10th floor landing and elevator waiting area. The elevator
had stopped mid-way between the 10th and 11th floor, beneath the bottom of
the elevator cab and the 10th floor there was a gap of 2-3 feet that led
directly into the open elevator shaft. Neither of the guys could see the gap
or the open elevator shaft. .
When John saw out the opening into the 10th floor hallway, he said: "I am
getting out of here." Concerned that the elevator might move, but completely
unaware of the danger posed by the open gap below the elevator cab, Will
replied "I don't know if I would do that." Within seconds, John got down on
his stomach, and using his elbows, hands and knees, began to slide out of the
elevator feet first. When John was almost all the way out, his elbow slipped
as he was moving his body along the floor of the elevator car, causing his
feet to swing-not down to the 10th floor landing-but forward into the gap and
the open elevator shaft. The momentum quickly carried his entire body into
the open shaft, where he disappeared and plummeted all 10 stories to the
bottom of the elevator shaft, 106 feet below.
John had massive injuries to every part of his body, his brain was
traumatically injured, causing severe swelling and bleeding that left him
with irreparable cognitive impairment. Now, at age 25, John is in a
wheelchair. He wears diapers. He is unable to control his hands well enough
to feed himself or even change his socks. He has trouble speaking.
But he knows who he is and what he once was. He says that he is lucky to be
alive. With a normal life expectancy, he has 52.34 more years to live.

The Players:
The apt owner
the elevator maintenance company
the security guard company

Apartment owner:
Apartment Owner (Ted) was warned that door restrictors needed to be installed
on the elevators to prevent passengers trapped in stalled elevators from
pulling open the elevator doors and trying to crawl out because "[t]here have
been many reports of people exiting the elevator in this fashion and falling
down the open hoistway.
Ted knew that the elevator was over 25 years old (and was told that an
elevator should be replaced after 25 years) and that the elevator had gotten
stuck 100 times in the last few years. The cost to Ted is $13,878 to install
door restrictors on 4 of the elevators .
On 35 separate occasions in the previous five years,Ted had been forced to
call the elevator maintenance company to assist, or extract persons trapped
in stalled elevators in the apt. building.

Ted states (and everybody agrees) that the elevator doors met applicable
safety codes and safety standards, and that those codes and standards did not
require modernization of the elevators nor installation of devices that would
have prevented the elevator doors from opening. Furthermore, Ted's time and
money were diverted to repairing damage to other buildings that had been
damaged in attacks by domestic terrorists.
Ted does not feel that he is responsible for any acts of employees of
either the maintenance company or the security guard company.



The Elevator Maintenance Company (EMC)
John contends that EMC is responsible for the proper maintenace of the
elevators.

EMC contends that the part(s) that caused the malfunction were either parts
that they had no responsibility to maintain, or that the part(s) simply fell
or broke and that the failure of the part(s) was not foreseeable to EMC.
EMC contends that Ted should have bought new elevators and put door
restrictors on.


The Security Guard Company (SGC)

John contends that the SGC guard told them how to escape and if he and Will
didn't learn how to exit the elevator, they would have remained in the
elevator.
SGC contends: (1) that Will was lying when he testified that the SGC
guard told them how to escape from the elevator (2) that John's act of
crawling out of the elevator was a negligent act on his own behalf and he had
been warned by his friend not to jump.

All together now:
Each defendant will assert that John was responsible for the injuries that
he sustained. They will assert that no reasonable person would have exited
the elevator under any circumstances, and that the fault, and harm that
occurred to John is solely his own.


What do you think?