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Date Posted: 10:37:40 09/04/08 Thu
Author: -Steve Fisk
Subject: Dealership settles lawsuit over Nissan Truck suicide (weird story, rather interesting)




Isn't it funny how you hear about something obscure- and then you hear about it again right after that?

I was down at the beach in Rhode Island yesterday, listening to a podcast of one of my favorite radio shows, "This American Life". The theme of the show was "Something for Nothing", featuring three stories about people who tried to get something for nothing. In one of the stories they interviewed a guy who had entered a contest where you have to keep you hand on a Nissan truck, and the last one standing keeps the truck. The man said the problem was that after three days of no sleep- every single person goes insane. The person who keeps sane the longest wins. Very interesting story.

So then today I see this article about a guy who was in the contest, which it turns out was held every year until this incident.

When I was listening to the podcast, I was thinking how the contest was not a good idea, that something bad could happen and it would be the dealership's fault. Looks like that is just what happened.


Longview car dealer, widow settle Hardbody suit
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, August 18, 2008

LONGVIEW — An East Texas car dealership has settled a lawsuit filed by the widow of a man who killed himself after dropping out of the business's Hands on a Hardbody contest.

Details of the settlement between Patterson Nissan and Chalala Gutierrez, the wife of contestant Richard Thomas Vega II, will be confidential. Gutierrez lawsuit had asked for about $600,000 in lost income and funeral and court costs.

The contest, featured in a 1990s documentary by the same name, has not been restaged since Vega's death.

Attorney Adam Allen said the dealership was happy with the result.

C.D. "Chuck" Cowan, one of the attorneys representing Gutierrez, said the settlement resolved all the allegations in the lawsuit.

The suit focused on the contest in which the person who kept their hand on the vehicle the longest won a Nissan truck and other prizes.

Vega dropped out of the 2005 endurance contest just before a scheduled rest break 48 hours into the event. Witnesses and law officers say Vega crossed the street and broke into a K-Mart, where he took a gun from a case and shot himself.

Gutierrez alleged in her suit that the dealership was negligent in conducting the contest. She said the dealership failed to "provide a safe environment for contestants" and did not provide personnel to restrain contestants who "temporarily lost their sanity." The lawsuit likened participants' stress and sleep deprivation from the contest to "brainwashing."

http://www.cactussky.com/clients/austinconsulting/090308/0818hardbody.html

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