Jack Louridas<\/a>, a 2026 Albany Academy graduate who is now a freshman on the men\u2019s basketball team at Yale University, filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Albany County this past month seeking damages from gym owner and former area basketball standout\u00a0Terron Victoria, trainer Carl Morris and his training business Workout Mania LLC, and New Jersey-based equipment manufacturer Pro Sports Inc., which does business as Champion Sports.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The lawsuit \u2014 filed by attorney Victor\u00a0Mazzotti of Harding Mazzotti, LLP \u2014 alleges that, on March 10 of this year, Louridas was working out under the supervision of Morris at Victoria Fitness, the\u00a0Menands gym operated by Victoria, when he was injured using an adjustable height training hurdle manufactured by Champion Sports.<\/p>\n
While training, the lawsuit states, Morris instructed Louridas to jump over the hurdle at its highest setting of 42 inches.<\/p>\n
According to the lawsuit, when Louridas, \u201cfailed to clear the cross-bar of the subject hurdle, the hurdle\u2019s upright poles failed to collapse, as it is designed to, and remained upright. Plaintiff landed on the subject hurdle, and one of the vertical pieces of the hurdle penetrated his rectum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Louridas, a native of Bethlehem, scored more than 1,500 points during his high school career at Albany Academy. The 6-foot-3 guard was a four-year player for the Cadets and was named a first-team All-New England Preparatory School Athletic Council selection as a senior before heading to Yale.<\/p>\n
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Neither Louridas nor Yale\u2019s athletic communications department responded to a request for comment seeking the extent of his injury. Louridas remains listed on Yale\u2019s men\u2019s basketball roster for the upcoming season and photos of him in uniform at practice were included in the program\u2019s Instagram stories this past week.<\/p>\n
Louridas\u2019 suit alleges that Pro Sports, Inc. was negligent in selling a \u201cdefective and unreasonably dangerous\u201d piece of equipment that \u201ccontained a long-standing design defect (of which Pro Sports, Inc. was aware).\u201d<\/p>\n
The suit also states that one of the hurdles \u201ctouted safety features\u201d was the ability to collapse for safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever,\u201d the suit continues, \u201cdue to this defective design, the hurdle fails to collapse at certain height settings despite Defendant\u2019s advertising to the contrary.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It goes on to state that Pro Sports, Inc. was aware of two prior impalement injuries suffered by users of the hurdle prior to the purchase of the subject hurdle in 2023, and that the company sold the hurdle \u201cwithout ever having conducted any type of formalized risk assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that Morris and Victoria were negligent in failing to \u201cprovide safe and properly functioning equipment\u201d as well as not providing \u201cadequate instructions and\/or warnings,\u201d \u201cfailing to abide by recognized industry safety standards and customs,\u201d and \u201cfailing to adequately and appropriately supervise\u201d Louridas as he used the hurdle.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit also alleges that Victoria and his facility \u201cfailed to properly maintain its premises and provided equipment that was in a defective, unsafe condition,\u201d and \u201cfailed to establish adequate policies and procedures for its professional gym regarding equipment inspection, equipment safety, hazard identification, and training safety standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his response to the summons, filed this past week, Victoria\u2019s attorney Jasper L. Mills denied Victoria\u2019s liability and requested the complaint be dismissed in its entirety.<\/p>\n
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Victoria is a graduate of Albany\u2019s now-defunct Bishop Maginn High School. He played four years of Division III college basketball at\u00a0Skidmore in Saratoga Springs.<\/p>\n
Mills did not reply to an email request for comment, nor did Victoria through an email listed on his business\u2019 Facebook page.<\/p>\n
Pro Sports, Inc. did not respond to a request for comment through Champion Sports\u2019 primary email address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack\u00a0Louridas played high school basketball for Albany Academy. Jim Franco\/Times Union Jack\u00a0Louridas is a freshman on the Yale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[292531,64,63,726,724,479686,292530,322,85],"class_list":["post-912129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-alco","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-hs-basketball-boys","tag-latestnews","tag-local","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}