Attorney General Greg Zoeller's office today filed a motion asking a Marion County judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit Cohen & Malad filed last week seeking to include everyone who attended the Sugarland concert at the Indiana State Fair grandstand as a plaintiff in the wake of the stage rigging collapse that left seven dead and more than 40 others injured. Indiana's tort claim statute requires claimants to provide a notice of their tort claim to the Attorney General and allow the office 90 days to respond before filing a lawsuit against the state. Unlike the Cohen & Malad lawsuit, attorneys representing six other claimants filed tort claim notices with the state and withheld naming the state as a defendant until the state had the opportunity to respond to the claim in accordance with the tort claims statute. The Star's Carrie Ritchie
reports:
Attorneys at Indianapolis law firm Cohen and Malad didn’t give the state 90 days to respond before filing suit on behalf of Angela Fischer and all of the stage collapse victims.
In the suit, Fischer claims that the collapse, which killed seven and injured dozens, caused her to suffer "severe emotional trauma." She was not physically injured.
Some local attorneys have been critical of the suit and have questioned whether it’s a publicity stunt.
However, Attorney General Greg Zoeller said in the news release that his request for the dismissal is based on procedure, not the merits of the suit.
“We can’t have one claimant try to cut in line when other claimants are following the rules,” Zoeller said in the release.
The state has received six tort claim notices so far, and the people pursuing the class action suit were the only ones who didn’t follow the proper procedure, according to the release.
A copy of the Attorney General's motion can be viewed
here. It also points out that the plaintiffs' attorneys in the class action lawsuit failed to identify the address of the claimant as required by Indiana's tort claims act.
