Parents Sue Sorority over daughters death
 

The damn link didn't work so I just posted the entire article.


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Dead Student's Parents Sue Sorority Fri Aug 26, 2:28 PM ET



PLYMOUTH, N.H. - The parents of a Plymouth State University student killed in an alleged hazing-related traffic crash are expanding a lawsuit to charge some of her sorority sisters with conspiracy.

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Richard and Annette Nester of Coventry, R.I., also are including the school and parents of the driver of the SUV that crashed in October 2003 while filled with sorority sister pledges.

Kelly Nester, 20, was killed when she was thrown from the SUV as it flipped over. Reports stated that Nester was one of 10 people in the vehicle, which was designed to seat five passengers safely.

The lawsuit said student Nicole Dalton was "driving erratically to scare the pledges," who reportedly were blindfolded in the rear of the vehicle. The conspiracy charges allege the women planned to haze the pledges and engaged in harmful activity.

Lawyers for one of the women said even if the women planned to blindfold the pledges and put them in the vehicle, there is no evidence they agreed to negligent driving.

"One cannot conspire to be negligent," they said.

Nester was a member of the SKO sorority's first pledge class, which was founded by two women who were banned from one of the university's existing sororities for misconduct.

Besides Dalton, of Rochester, the lawsuit names three others who were PSU students and members of the Sigma Kappa Omega sorority: Olivia Lucca of Mount Vernon, Maine; Heather Haigh of Ridgefield, Conn.; and Nicole Little of Londonderry.

Dalton's parents, James and Peggy Dalton, also were named in the lawsuit, as they owned the vehicle and were aware of their daughter's four prior speeding convictions and one motor vehicle accident, the suit said.

Plymouth State University is also a defendant in the case for "failing to prevent hazing activities."

if you do a search for this incident in the risk management section, you will find a link to the entire tragedy. i can't remember exactly which npc this group was expelled from, but it wasn't sigma kappa. they created a local and used those letters. if i remember correctly, the entire npc chapter dissolved, but i don't remember if they all took part in the local. in either case, it is here on gc somewhere.

The girls were previous members of ASA...I went searching through the threads and found it.

I was just thinking: "For once the article didn't make a big deal that these girls were banned from ASA"

What happens when you sue a local? Since they usually don't have the insurance that national or even regional groups do, can you really get any money? If the sorority was underground, can the university even be held liable for the actions of unrecognized groups?

Are the parents cognizant of the fact that their daughter willingly joined an offshoot group of women kicked out of a national organization for misconduct? My parents don't care about Greek life whatsoever--but they knew better than to let my sister and I join renegade sororities.

i also thought that the drivers were cleared of reckless driving in the investigation. i seem to remember wet leaves being the cause. i understand this is a civil suit, but won't the results of that investigation have any bearing?

I think civil suits are easier to win--there's a different burden of proof. Remember the O.J. case?

Yes. Unfortunately she's still caught up in all of this (a wonderful woman I might add!), so let's be considerate of that.

What isn't going to help these girls out was that since they were members of a national organization, it could be used against them that they had received plenty of information regarding hazing and risk management. Whether they chose to use it or not is up to them, however.

This story makes my stomach hurt. :(

PsychTau

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer.

From what I understand, if there was no insurance policy that would cover this all the members of the local would be responsible for paying the settlement. They would have to divide it up amongst themselves. I could be wrong...I guess it depends on exactly how the suit was worded. It may only list certain members and not the entire organization, especially since there's no real alumnae base.


Ummmm....I'm not a lawyer, and I have my theories that I'd rather not discuss (gained from discussing this case and similar cases with other professionals). I think for negligence to be proven, one must have some sort of prior knowledge and fail to act on that knowledge. One of our GC lawyers could probably address this issue better than I.

PsychTau

My friends sister actually covered the initial story for our main RI paper. Kelly was from RI.

While the sorority was "unrecognized" it is quoted in the paper by the GA that there were "4 unrecognized sororities and 4 unrecognized fraternities" so basically you have a situation in which 50% of the greek population is "unrecognized"

Anyway here is the link to tha article
http://www.projo.com/westbay/content...e25.a13bc.html
and if you go to
http://www.projo.com
there are more.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Blood from a stone, blah blah blah. I guess they could garnish wages or something.

There were only 3 women (Dalton, Lucca and another woman not named in the story) who were terminated by ASA HQ. Everyone else who left the sorority at that time self-terminated and I'm not sure how many of them wound up in SKO.

ETA, in answer to PinkyPhiMu's question, these 3 got terminated and then 14 more sisters left. The ASA chapter continued for some time after this incident. The chapter WAS NOT closed at the same time this happened or as a direct result of this happening.

And I think, in this case, the school was definitely at fault for knowing there were unofficial groups out there and just saying "they're not recognized" instead of trying to bring them into the fold. I could say more but I am going to shut up now. :)

Keep in mind that our insurance only covers things if we followed all the risk management guidelines. If we don't, then we're left high and dry too.

It would also depend on factors such as whether the local sorority was incorporated.