HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A fraternity can be sued in connection with a 2003 crash that killed four Yale University students, including two members of the school's baseball team, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The students were returning from a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity event in New York City on Jan. 17, 2003, when their SUV slammed into a tractor-trailer that had crashed on Interstate 95 in Fairfield.
Relatives of one of the victims alleged in a lawsuit that fraternity leaders failed to provide safe transportation home from the event. They said the driver was sleep-deprived during the fraternity's so-called "Hell Week," when its pledges are allegedly hazed.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a lower court decision in favor of the fraternity and said the lawsuit can proceed.
The Associated Press left messages for lawyers in the case on Wednesday.
The crash killed the SUV driver, Sean Fenton, 20, of Newport Beach, Calif., and three of four back seat passengers — Andrew Dwyer, 19, of Hobe Sound, Fla.; Nicholas Grass, 19, of Holyoke, Mass; and Kyle Burnat, 19, of Atlanta. Grass and Burnat were pitchers on the baseball team.
Five other Yale students in the SUV were injured, including members of the football team.
The Supreme Court's ruling came in a lawsuit filed in 2005 by the administrator for Grass' estate, Marc Grenier, against the national office of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the fraternity's Yale chapter, the state Department of Transportation and two construction companies that had worked on the highway.
The lawsuit claims the fraternity had a duty to provide safe transportation home and negligently chose Fenton as the driver, even though he had had little sleep that week and had been up for nearly 20 hours before the accident.
Grenier also claimed the state DOT and two construction companies were liable for alleged safety hazards at the highway construction site where the tractor-trailer crashed. The claims against the state were dismissed because of government immunity from lawsuits, and the construction companies settled with Grenier.
