The Sag Harbor School District and its superintendent, Jeff Nichols, have been named in a wrongful death lawsuit filed this week by the parents of Cesar Adrian Albarracin Guncay, a sixth grader at Pierson Middle School who drowned in the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania while on a school trip on May 27.
Also named as co-defendants in the suit are the Hampton Jitney and Whitewater Rafting Adventures, owned by Steve Bretzik and Hilary Bretzik, a married couple.
The lawsuit, filed in New York State, alleges that the superintendent was negligent and "vicariously liable to plaintiffs as he was employee, agent, representative official and servant of defendant Sag Harbor" when he authorized the trip that sent 80 sixth-grade students on the overnight rafting trip.
No specific dollar amount is requested in the lawsuit, but on July 17 claims were made to the school that it refused to pay.
Delia Leonor Guncay Morales, Cesar's mother, Cesar Hernan Albarracin Guncay, his father, and Jorge Ramiro Buestan Sangurima, a co-fiduciary of Cesar's estate, are asking for "compensation for all general, special, incidental, and consequential damages suffered by" them along with attorney fees and additional relief.
What they are asking exceeds "the jurisdictional limits of all lower courts." The suit was filed in State Supreme Court.
Joel Robinson, of the firm Robinson Yablon Cooper & Bonfante, is the attorney representing Cesar's family.
The Hampton Jitney was named because, according to court documents, it was "retained, hired, and employed" by the school "to choose the operating company for the whitewater rafting trip."
The lawsuit alleges that the school "never obtained written consent, waiver, or release from the parents of each student, including [from Cesar's parents] authorizing defendant Jitney to select the operating company for the whitewater rafting trip."
The suit also alleges that Mr. Nichols and the school "failed to ascertain whether its sixth-grade students who went on this class trip had previously ever been whitewater rafting," while promising and assuring families that "each raft would have a professional and certified rafting guide in every boat with the minor children."
Instead, the suit claims, Mr. Nichols "negligently, carelessly, and recklessly tasked only 10 teachers to supervise nearly 80 of his students" on the 14 rafts while Whitewater Rafting supplied only five guides, who were "traveling separately in kayaks, and not inside rafts with the students."
Further, the suit claims that Whitewater Rafting, which continues to operate today as it did before the tragedy, "knew that its rafting guides who supervised the sixth-grade students including [Cesar] on the whitewater rafting trip were not professionally trained or certified."
Cesar's parents allege that the school, rafting company, and the Jitney "failed to investigate, discover, or learn about the presence of obstacles in the water including a dangerous downed and fallen tree in the Lehigh River which caused a strainer known for trapping everything but flowing water before its students were permitted inside rafts and sent whitewater rafting."
And, the suit claims, the rafting company did not mention that only days before the trip "there had been two prior scheduled dam releases discharging extra water to create faster-flowing rapids and boost river depths, increasing the difficulty of the course." The Bretziks' rafting company, Cesar's family alleges, was "negligent, careless, and reckless for not canceling the trip or operating it on a different course" considering the high-water conditions and obstacles.
The rafting company was chosen "because it held itself out to defendant Sag Harbor, its employees, agents, representatives, and servants as having experience and a strong focus on safety and reliability."
Four rafts overturned that day in the river.
The lawsuit describes that when Cesar's boat crashed into the tree strainer he was thrown "into the cold, swirling, rapid waters of the Lehigh River with its dangerous currents, which pulled, suctioned, and vacuumed [his] head and body under the water, pinning him beneath its branches, trapping him, preventing him from resurfacing, and causing him to suffer extreme and unimaginable conscious pain and suffering for several minutes, fear of impending death, pre-death terror, asphyxiation, choking, torment, torture, agony, disfigurement, hemorrhaging, and wrongful death by way of drowning."
The law firm McGivney, Kluger, Clark & Intoccia is representing the school district and Mr. Nichols. A call for comment on Friday morning was not immediately returned.