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Family sues state and contractors over
crash that killed 4 Relatives of 20-year-old Sean Fenton, of Newport Beach, Calif., accuse the state Department of Transportation of failing to warn motorists that an earlier accident created hazardous conditions on the highway. The lawsuit also claims that a crew from M. DeMatteo Construction of Massachusetts and Brunalli Construction Co. of Southington caused an outage of highway lighting on I-95 along the Fairfield-Bridgeport border at the scene of the fatal crash when it knocked down a light pole. DOT spokesman Chris Cooper said Sunday that he could not comment on the lawsuit because he had not seen it. No one answered the phones Sunday at DeMatteo's office in Boston or Brunalli's headquarters. Fenton was the driver of a sport utility vehicle carrying nine Yale students back from a fraternity event in New York City that plowed into a tractor-trailer that had crashed in the northbound lanes of I-91 in the early morning hours of Jan. 17, 2003. Most of the victims were members of Delta Kappa Epsilon who had escorted pledges to New York for a hide-and-seek type game. Fenton, the designated driver, had been awake for nearly 20 hours before the crash, Yale students told investigators. A report by the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that highway lights were out at 5 a.m., the time of the crash, and that no driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Several witnesses also reported the road was very slick from ice and snow. The report placed no specific blame for the accident. Also killed in the crash were Andrew Dwyer, 19, of Hobe Sound, Fla.; Nicholas Grass, 19, of Holyoke, Mass; and Kyle Burnat, 19, of Atlanta. The Fentons filed suit in Bridgeport Superior Court on Friday, the Connecticut Post reported. The family's lawyer, Robert Adelman of Bridgeport, declined to comment. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. |
