美国电梯致死案诉讼

Daniel Kliman

Daniel Kliman

２００８年底的一天，Daniel Kliman博士曾踏进一座电梯，按下Ｌ键，电梯开始滑行前往大厅，下降半层后，电梯突然停止。
几分钟后，Kliman，这名旧金山湾区饱受争议的亲以色列的积极分子从电梯井中跌落６０英尺死亡。６天后，人们发现他的尸体，人们猜测他是被谋杀的，因为他是犹太复国主义者。死前他正准备教授阿拉伯语。
这座事故电梯一个月前接受了调查，根据加州法律，卡在楼层间的电梯不允许人们从中逃出。
随着警方的调查和旧金山法院对此案的审理，案件的起因逐渐明朗：造成死亡是因为电梯故障，之前就已经被发现，但一直没修。
Kliman在旧金山犹太区有很高的声望，他是素食者，创建了《以色列之声》，用来支持以色列，遭到了巴基斯坦人和其他团体的反对。
旧金山电台主持人Michael Savage说：“这不是谋杀案，”他复述了一个流传很广的Kliman被谋杀的猜想：“他们想杀死他，就取消了他的课，然后等他出现。杀手把它扔下电梯井，然后找侦探证明他是自己掉下去的。可谁会相信一个人没事儿去强行开电梯门然后自杀呢？我是不相信。”
Kliman的母亲决定起诉电梯生产商通力公司和发生事故的建筑的拥有者，她不相信自己儿子是被谋杀的。他母亲说：“我之前听到和看到的消息都是假的，警察最后查明了真相。”她的陪审团会在４月１８日去法院。
Kliman母亲的陪审团以疏忽为由起诉通力公司，要求９６０万美元赔偿。接到起诉的通力公司没有发表看法。
Kliman夫人的律师认为电梯故障导致了事故，事故调查持续了很长时间，期间被一些因素阻止。现在，人们开始相信电梯故障致死的说法。
加州法律规定电梯需安装电梯门限制器，限制器位于电梯内门上方，用于在电梯运行或发生乘客被困事故时，阻止乘客强行把门开到大于４英寸的缝隙逃生。
加州职业安全卫生处退休的电梯官员Dee Swerrie说：“从停止的电梯中爬出来是很危险的事情。”
门限制器就是让人们不要爬出电梯，等待救援。但Klima被困的电梯中的门限制器失灵，才让他开门出去（通力公司的律师辩解称Klima力气太大，门限制器抵挡不住，才把门打开的）。开门后，当跌落的他意识到自己犯了多大的错误时，为时已晚。

Lawsuit Lays Out Activist’s Death by Elevator

Daniel Kliman stepped alone into a wood-paneled elevator in late 2008 and pressed the silver “L” button. The doors slid shut, and the carriage began gliding toward the lobby, but it lurched to a halt after descending just half a floor.
Minutes later, Dr. Kliman, one of the Bay Area’s most prominent and controversial pro-Israel activists, plummeted 60 feet down the elevator shaft to his death. When Dr. Kliman’s body was discovered, six days after the fatal fall, conspiracy theories blossomed, mostly alleging that he had been murdered because of his Zionist activism. Before he died, the 38-year-old internist was on the seventh floor of the historic Sharon Building, home of San Francisco’s House of Shields bar, for an evening Arabic language class. The lesson, it turned out, had been canceled.
The elevator had been inspected one month earlier, and if an elevator is up to California code, it should not be humanly possible to escape unassisted from a carriage that is stalled between floors.
But in the wake of police and state investigations and the release of numerous documents in a lawsuit filed by Dr. Kliman’s family and currently being heard in San Francisco Superior Court, a more mundane culprit has emerged as the cause of his death: An elevator malfunction that was identified during the inspection but not repaired.
Dr. Kliman was a high profile and idiosyncratic leader within the Bay Area’s Jewish community — a gay vegetarian cyclist who preached tolerance of Arabs. He co-founded Voice of Israel, which holds rallies in support of Israel when Palestinian and other activists demonstrate against it. The dueling rallies are heavily policed and often become violent.
“It’s right out of a scene from a murder mystery, isn’t it?” Michael Savage, a San Francisco shock jock, said in a Dec. 3, 2008, broadcast, as he recounted the widespread conspiracy theories. “They want to kill an activist who they hate. They cancel classes. He shows up. The killers are waiting for him. They throw him down an elevator shaft, and they get a doofus detective from San Francisco who says he fell down the shaft on his own. How in the world can a detective say he fell down the shaft when the doors would have been locked? Do you think the man pried the doors open to kill himself? I don’t.”
But Dr. Kliman’s mother — who lives in New York and is suing the elevator manufacturer Kone and the Sharon Building’s owners and managers over her son’s death — said she never believed he had be en murdered.
“What I have seen from the reports and what I’ve heard, that was not true; it was ruled out fairly early by the police department,” said Edith Kliman, whose suit is scheduled to go before a jury on April 18. “I have no reason to believe anything else.” Mrs. Kliman’s suit alleges negligence and seeks $9.6 million in damages.
Kone declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Officials and lawyers for Mrs. Kliman point to a malfunction in the elevator, unrelated to what caused the carriage to stall, in explaining Dr. Kliman’s death. It took a long time to establish the cause of the accident, in part because some critical records were withheld from investigators. But everyone involved now agrees on the unlikely sequence of events that led to the fatal fall.
California regulations require door restrictors to be installed on elevators. They sit above an elevator’s internal doors and prevent them from being opened more than four inches when the carriage is traveling or stuck between floors.
“Getting people out of an elevator that has stopped between floors is always a risky business,” said Dee Swerrie, a retired senior elevator official at the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “People get panicky.”
Door restrictors force passengers who are trapped inside a stalled elevator to wait for help, protecting them from deadly risks that are not easily understood from inside the carriage.
But the door restrictor in the elevator carrying Dr. Kliman was broken, allowing him to force open the door with his hands. (In court documents, lawyers for Kone argued that Dr. Kliman was strong enough that he could have forced open a door restrictor.) After opening the doors, state officials concluded, he fell into a deadly trap that is well understood within the elevator industry.