Entire Yale Frat Sued For Tailgating Accident That Killed a Grad Student

Fraternities are always trying to balance reckless behavior, good times, and nobody getting hurt. Now the family of a girl killed in a fraternity-related accident is taking serious action  against the leaders of a fraternity–in addition to every single member of the fraternity. [Image via Google Maps]
That would be every member of Yale’s Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, which is facing a civil lawsuit in connection with an accident that killed 30-year-old graduate student Nancy Barry and injured two other women, student Sarah Short and Harvard employee Elizabeth Dembach, at a tailgating party for the annual Harvard-Yale football game, according to The Daily Mail.
The accident in question occurred in 2011 at Yale’s football field. Fraternity member Brendan Ross accidentally hit Barry and two other women with a moving van he was driving to the field. He was bringing some beer kegs to his fraternity’s tailgating party when he accidentally hit the three women. Ross was arrested and charged and eventually took a plea deal with prosecutors that downgraded his charges to driving unreasonably fast and unsafe starting without having to serve time in prison.
The lawsuits filed by Barry and Short’s families includes all 86 members of the fraternity as well as Yale University, the city of New Haven, the national Sigma Phi Epsilon organization and U-Haul. An attorney for the Barry family claimed the fraternity’s national organization refused to take action because the incident happened at a non-sanctioned event, which forced them to take legal action of their own. Yale instituted a ban on kegs at all athletic events following this tragic incident.