Last week, athlete Lazar Đukić drowned at the CrossFit Games in Fort Worth, Texas. Now, people are raising questions about liability for the lake drowning accident and the safety protocols of the CrossFit event—or possibly the lack of them.
In a recent interview with Fort Worth Star-Telegram, CrossFit gym owner Rudy Trevino, who was also at the CrossFit Games on Marine Creek Lake in Fort Worth, shared his concerns about the water safety measures there. Most notably, he explained that the water rescue staff at the event seemed to be volunteers who might have been selected without any proper training or research into their qualifications. “The people on the paddle boards and the jet skis are supposed to be water safety professionals, in hindsight the people on the paddle boards didn’t have the rescue buoys. I don’t know if they had whistles or radios. For sure, they didn’t have rescue equipment. There was no sufficient communication. Why didn’t those people have communication devices with them,” he questioned in the article.
Other CrossFit competitors from around the world also shared their grief, frustration, and concerns following Lazar’s drowning. Katrín Davíðsdóttir, arguably the most famous CrossFit champion out of Iceland, used her social media to point a finger at CrossFit for its apparent negligence. In one post, she stated, “For years, athletes have raised concerns about safety — whether it’s heatstroke, over programming, or other risks — but our voices haven’t been heard.” With such a statement coming from such a prominent member of the international CrossFit community, concerns about the event and CrossFit’s safety as a whole simply cannot be set aside.
Is CrossFit Games Liable for Lazar’s Drowning?
When a wrongful death occurs, people close to the deceased deserve to know what happened and why. Lazar’s family and the CrossFit competitors who knew him are right to ask if his death could have been prevented and if CrossFit Games could be liable for failing to do so.
No lawsuit against CrossFit Games has been officially announced yet, and it isn’t known if one will form. However, given the complaints about the event’s safety protocols and emergency measures – and even complaints about the water temperature being too high and competitors being required to swim toward the sun, making it harder to see them in the water – it is likely that a legal argument about liability and negligence could easily be made.
Liability can be established when a party owes a duty of care to another party but fails to uphold that duty through reasonable or expected means, resulting in the other party’s loss or injury. In this situation, it might be argued that CrossFit Games owed it to Lazar to provide adequate safety measures before allowing him to compete in its competition and that he drowned due to a lack of those measures.
We Stand Up for Drowning Victims
The Doan Law Firm, PLLC is a nationally recognized lawsuit for our representation of drowning victims and their families. Throughout our decades of experience, we have recovered billions of dollars through successful claim settlements and lawsuit awards, almost entirely won for drowning accident claimants and plaintiffs. Led by the esteemed Attorney Jimmy Doan and with law offices throughout the country, our firm can take drowning accident lawsuits against any defendant, including major corporations and sporting event organizers like CrossFit Games.
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