The first family members of a victim of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse filed a civil lawsuit Wednesday against the engineering and construction firms behind the failed project.
The suit, on behalf of the wife and 15-year-old son of Rolando Fraga, a 60-year-old systems technician crushed to death while driving under the bridge last week, argued that FIGG Bridge Engineers and Munilla Construction Management were negligent in failing to close the road while workers performed tests on the bridge.
“If MCM+FIGG had simply closed the roadway while workers were adjusting tension rods, so many lives would not have been lost” Christos Lagos, the family’s attorney, said in a statement. “One of those lives lost, Mr. Fraga, has a 15 year old son who recently attended a college fair that included FIU; he was excited about the future possibility of attending FIU and studying engineering.”
This marks the third suit filed in the bridge collapse but the first from a victim’s family. The families of Alberto Arias, 53, and Osvaldo González, 57, announced plans Tuesday to file a suit through their Doral-based attorney Yesenia Collazo but have yet to do so.
Read More: These are the victims of the FIU pedestrian bridge collapse
The first civil suit, filed Monday, was from a man injured in the collapse while riding his bike to work when a driver trying to avoid the collapsed bridge swerved into him.
The same lawyer, Matt Morgan or Orlando-based Morgan & Morgan, filed a second suit Tuesday on behalf of another survivor, 21-year-old FIU student Emily Panagos, whose car was half crushed in the collapse.
This story was originally published March 22, 2018 6:17 PM.