The mother of Cedar Rapids’ Gerald Michael Belz, an 18-year-old University of Iowa student who froze to death during a polar vortex in January 2019, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university on Wednesday.

Belz’s estate is suing the university for negligence. According to the lawsuit, the university locked exterior doors to the building where Belz lived, preventing anyone from entering the building’s vestibules without their student ID, and failing to alert residents of the change or post personnel at the entrances who might have rendered aid.

On the night of Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019, Iowa City faced a wind chill of 51 degrees below zero. The extreme weather led the university to cancel classes the next day.

Belz was found unresponsive at 2:48 a.m. behind Halsey Hall the next morning by UI Police. He lived a six-minute walk away, in Burge Hall.

According to a Feb. 15 news release, the university and the Johnson County Medical Examiner Department ruled his death an accident.

In the lawsuit, prepared by Trial Lawyers for Justice, an Iowa-based firm that specializes in wrongful deaths, the estate alleges the university contributed to Belz’s death in changing its normal practices.

Burge Hall, according to suit, has four entrances, each with an exterior and interior door. While the interior door normally remains locked and requires a student ID to open, the exterior doors remain unlocked at all times. On a cold night like Jan. 29, this would have allowed people access to the heated vestibule even if they did not have an ID card to open the interior door.

According to the filing, the UI locked the exterior doors to the residence hall’s Clinton Street entrance to prevent pipes from freezing in the vestibule. The suit alleges that, without notice to residents, the UI locked the building’s other three entrances, as well, preventing access to the vestibule area without an ID card.

“The University’s decision to lock the exterior doors created a situation in which no one, including residents of Burge Hall, was able to gain entrance to the heated vestibule areas of the building without a University ID card,” the suit reads. The UI could have posted security guards or other personnel at the entrances to offer assistance. “As a result, even residents of Burge Hall did not have the ability to alert anyone inside the dormitory that they needed help entering the building.”

According to the lawsuit, surveillance video from at 1:09 a.m. on Jan. 30, 2019, captured Belz knocking on one of the residence hall’s entrances, unable to get anyone’s attention to let him in.

University spokesperson Hayley Bruce declined to comment on the pending litigation when reached by the Press-Citizen on Friday.

Article Source: https://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/education/university-of-iowa/2020/08/07/university-iowa-student-froze-death-family-files-wrongful-death-lawsuit/3319878001/

As it turned out, the client was looking down at the time of impact signing his warning ticket. Despite looking fine on the dash cam and returning to work, the following day he went to his doctor because he was experiencing pain and tingling in his arm.  He was diagnosed with a cervical muscle strain and mild paresthesia.  The radiating pain continued so an MRI was ordered showing “very advanced degeneration”.  He had an anterior cervical discectomy surgery and suffered a complication of right vocal cord paralysis, a known but rare complication of the surgery.  While his voice got better, he now suffers with less breathing capacity and swallowing difficulty.

The State of Iowa retained expert neurosurgeon Dr. Todd Ridenour from Davenport, Iowa and physiatrist Dr. Joseph Chen from University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics who gave opinions that the client’s on-going neck and back complaints were caused primarily by preexisting degenerative changes and/or the client’s active lifestyle, which included horseback riding.  Just three weeks before trial, counsel for the State of Iowa disclosed a conglomeration of the client’s Facebook posts taken after the first crash with the police cruiser showing the client horseback riding, ziplining, and boating.  The Facebook posts predated Trial Lawyer’s for Justice’s involvement in the case.  Further complicating matters, the client was involved in two subsequent motor vehicle collisions.  After an October 2, 2015 collision, the client complained of neck pain, and following a third collision on February 9, 2017, which was a high speed collision, the client received emergency medical care for neck pain following the third collision.

Our client continued working full time to take care of his family so there was no wage loss claim.  We also waived past medicals of approximately $50,000.  The Friday before trial was set to begin in Linn County District Court, the State of Iowa offered $975,000 to settle the case. Prior to TL4J being brought into the case, the State of Iowa made no offers to settle the case despite repeated demands.

Trial Lawyers for Justice was represented by Courtney Rowley, Nicholas Rowley, Dominic Pechota, and Matt Reilly.