A Texas State University student who says he was injured when he fell 40 feet down an improperly covered manhole shaft on campus has filed a lawsuit against\u00a0the university system and a construction company.<\/p>\n
Nathan Bain, a Texas State student from Corpus Christi, filed the lawsuit on April 28 against the Texas State University System and construction company\u00a0Skanska USA Commercial Development Inc.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that\u00a0Bain was walking near the Supple Science Building on campus on Sept. 5 when he stepped onto an \u201celevated manhole cover\u201d he believed to be concrete. The manhole cover was actually \u201cworn plastic or plexiglass material that merely appeared to be concrete,” according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The cover gave way under Bain and he fell 40 feet down the manhole shaft and “into a cavern,\u201d according to the lawsuit.\u00a0Bain suffered injuries to his knees, ankles, hands and lungs, according to the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges Skanska was operating the construction site where the manhole was located, and accuses the company and the university system of negligence for failing to cover the manhole\u00a0\u201cwith a sturdy covering that would not break under an individual\u2019s mere body weight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was “foreseeable that a student may stand on the elevated manhole cover or even sit down on the elevated manhole cover for a moment’s rest,\u201d according to the lawsuit. \u201c(Bain) did not know of the dangerous condition and indeed had no reason to know that the cover would break or that the shaft it was protecting was so deep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bain is seeking $250,000 to $1 million in compensation, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The Texas State University System and Skanska were served copies of the lawsuit in May and have yet to file a response to the lawsuit, according to Hays County court records,\u00a0<\/p>\n
Texas State spokesperson\u00a0Jayme Blaschke said the school \u201cdoes not discuss active litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skanska representatives did\u00a0not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas State University student who says he was injured when he fell 40 feet down an improperly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-317569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}