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SigEp called to trial in tailgate lawsuit

A New Haven superior court judge has ordered the national Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity to proceed to trial as a defendant in a lawsuit stemming from the 2011 Harvard-Yale tailgate crash that left one woman dead.

The national organization had initially sought to distance itself from the crash, which took place in November 2011 when Brendan Ross ’13, a member of Yale’s chapter of SigEp, lost control of a U-Haul truck on his way to a fraternity-sanctioned tailgate. The truck plowed into a group of pedestrians before hitting another truck. A Massachusetts woman, Nancy Barry, was killed, and two others — including plaintiff Sarah Short SOM ’13 — were injured.

Short filed a lawsuit against Ross and the national fraternity in 2012. She also sued Yale University and U-Haul in the original suit, but later withdrew those claims.

According to Eric P. Smith of Faxon Law Group, the firm representing Short, the fraternity’s risk management director said in a 2012 deposition that the local and national organizations had nothing to do with each other and that the national fraternity should not be held responsible for the accident. The organization filed a motion for summary judgment, in which a judge would have made a decision and the matter would not have gone before a jury.

But Judge Kari Anne Dooley wrote in an order Friday that, after reviewing “extensive” evidence about the two groups’ affiliation, she could find “no one conclusive determination … as to whether an agency relationship exists between the local chapter and the National organization.”

That matter, she said, will be left to a jury to decide.

Smith told the News that the jury trial would ensure the full accountability of the national organization, which he said exerts an unusual amount of control over its local chapters.

“[Ross] was driving to a fraternity-sponsored event for a fraternity purpose,” Smith said. “Based on evidence we uncovered through depositions and discovery, we laid out a whole bunch of ways in which [the national headquarters] have not only direct involvement but direct knowledge of exactly what goes on in New Haven, Connecticut.”

Representatives for the national organization were not immediately available for comment.

A separate lawsuit filed by Short is also making its way through Superior Court. That lawsuit names the 86 members of Yale’s SigEp chapter at the time of the accident as defendants.

The 86 members also asked the judge for a summary judgment, and a judge is expected to decide on that question soon, Smith said. If the judge decides that the 86 defendants all appear for trial, they will appear at the same trial as the national fraternity.

Jury selection is scheduled for Dec. 14, according to case documents.