Law Students

Law Students Survive Terrifying Elevator Torts Issue-Spotter Before Exams

Can you spot all the ways this elevator tried to murder them?

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We can joke about this, because the law students survived. But we’re thankful to be able to joke about an elevator that fell 84 floors.

Six people got into an elevator in the John Hancock building (I don’t know, or care, what it’s called now) on the 95th floor. The passengers heard “clack clack clack” sounds, which was apparently elevator equipment breaking. The elevator then fell 84 floors. From the Washington Post:

It started to get “bumpy,” like an incoming flight to Chicago, a Northwestern University law student who was in the elevator told the Chicago Tribune. It whizzed past all the usual stops, falling and falling and falling 84 floors before coming to an abrupt stop somewhere between the 11th and the 12th.

Even after the elevator stabilized, there were more problems. More clacking. And the first responders couldn’t easily reach the passengers:

They were trapped in a “blind shaft,” meaning there were no doors through which firefighters could enter the shaft and get to them, Chicago Fire Department Battalion Chief Patrick Maloney told reporters at the scene, according to ABC 7 Chicago. The malfunction had been caused by a snapped “hoist rope,” or elevator cable, Maloney said. Other cables were still attached, keeping the elevator from plummeting to the floor.

“It was a pretty precarious situation where the cables that broke were on top of the elevator,” Maloney said. “We couldn’t do an elevator-to-elevator rescue. We had to breach a wall on the 11th floor of the parking garage in order to open up the elevator doors.”

Alright, so the faulty cables clearly attaches some kind of tort liability. But in my answer I’d focus on the design flaw that left the elevator in a position where rescue was challenging. How in the hell do you have an elevator shaft that can only be accessed by breaking through the walls to open the doors? What kind of Deepwater Horizon system are they running there?

Firefighters were eventually able to breach the wall and rescue the passengers.

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You’ve made some powerful personal injury lawyers today, Chicago. Those kids are going to emerge from the elevator knowing exactly how important tort law is and how it functions to keep people safe.

‘I believed we were going to die’: An elevator in a Chicago skyscraper fell 84 floors, requiring a dramatic rescue of six people [Washington Post]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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