In another case of alleged negligence in the staging of an endurance contest, the survivors of a Texas man are claiming an auto dealership drove him to kill himself after he had stood with his hand on a pickup truck for two days.

Richard Vega's family filed their wrongful-death action Jan. 25 -- coincidentally, the same day that the husband and children of a California woman sued a radio station in her death from water intoxication.

While Jennifer Strange competed in an on-air water-drinking contest, Vega, 24, was a contestant in the 2005 "Hands on a Hardbody" promotion sponsored by Patterson Nissan of Longview, Texas.

The dealership offered a Nissan pickup to the contestant who endured standing beside the truck with a hand on it longer than any other. After standing for 48 sleepless hours, Vega walked away from the contest, broke into a Kmart across the street and, with a shotgun taken from the store, shot himself in the head.

“The conditions of the contest caused Richard Vega to become temporarily insane and to take his own life,” the Gregg County District Court petition, which names Vega's widow, son and mother as plaintiffs, says.

The case is more of a stretch than that of Strange's family. While her fatal water intoxication was a direct result of the contest itself, Vega's suicide was an “intervening act” in the chain of causation.

“There's a question of causation and, even more, foreseeability,” agrees the Vega family's attorney, Blake Bailey of Tyler, Texas.

But Bailey believes the dealership was negligent in not providing contestants with psychiatric or medical monitoring when it “knew or should have known that the terms of the contest would cause the contestants to lose control of their mental faculties.”

Contestants got one five-minute break an hour and were given high-energy drinks to keep them going. Communist interrogators used a similar technique, the suit says, to break down U.S. prisoners during the Korean War.

“If you put people in a position where they lose mental capacity ... it's foreseeable that they would put themselves or someone else at risk,” Bailey argues.

Patterson Nissan had contestants sign liability waivers but, according to Bailey, Texas courts routinely find that such waivers are not clear enough to be enforceable.

“Hands on a Hardbody” was the subject of a 1997 documentary –- its DVD release sports the tagline, “You Lose the Contest When You Lose Your Mind.” The endurance record, set by the 2000 winner, is 126 hours.

Citing the Vega tragedy, the dealership cancelled the 2006 contest but Vega's profile is still available on its Web site. Asked “How long do you think you will last?” he replied: “To the end.”

By Matthew Heller
1/30/07