A Texas auto dealership has settled a wrongful-death lawsuit involving its “Hands on a Hardbody” fatigue endurance contest after a judge ruled that it owed a duty to prevent sleep-deprived contestants from harming themselves.

Patterson Nissan of Longview agreed to the settlement days before trial was due to start Aug. 18 in the case filed by the widow of a contestant in the 2005 “Hands on a Hardbody” competition. Richard Vega, 24, killed himself after standing with his hand on a pickup truck for two days in the hope of winning the vehicle.

The amount of the settlement was not disclosed, but plaintiff's attorney Blake Bailey of Tyler, Texas, said things “worked out well” for Vega's widow, Chalala Gutierrez. “There's enough money for [her] to take care of her family,” he said.

The defense had argued in a summary judgment motion that “placing a duty on an entity like Patterson to be the guarantors of the well-being of voluntary contestants is absurd, and will have far-reaching effects on other businesses and enterprises.”

But after a hearing in May, District Court Judge Nathan E. White said the case should go to trial, finding it would not have been unreasonable for Patterson to ensure the safety of contestants who, like Vega, drop out after going without sleep for an extended period of time.

“The defense was saying you have no duty toward a contestant ... no matter what you do, no matter what experience you've had in the past,” Bailey said. “That's kind of a rough thing to say. It always gets back to reasonableness. The question is whether or not there was reasonableness in the way the contest was conducted.”

The prize in “Hands on a Hardbody” went to the contestant who endured standing beside the truck with a hand on it longer than any other. After 48 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 contest manager testified in a deposition that one previous contestant became so disoriented he thought he was in Oklahoma, another thought he saw plants on the hood of the truck, and another thought she saw her husband “smooching” another woman.

Gutierrez contended that the contest was “effectively 'an experiment on sleep deprivation'” and required “obvious and common-sense safety measures, such as an escort, debriefing by a trained expert, and/or a mandatory, supervised sleep period.” Contestants got one five-minute break an hour and were given high-energy drinks to keep them going.

According to Bailey, the possibility of harm to a contestant should be weighed against what it would have cost the organizers to mitigate the risk. Judge White, he said, found that “the cost of having a medical professional check people before they leave [the contest] is relatively small.”

In a similar case, a Sacramento man sued a radio station last year, alleging it was liable for the death of his wife after she participated in an on-air water-drinking contest. “It was a stupid contest, period,” Bailey said. “The harm [to a contestant] could be irreversible.”

A “Hands on a Hardbody” contestant, he continued, could avoid the harm of sleep deprivation simply by going home and getting some sleep. Vega, however, never made it home.

By Matthew Heller
8/25/08