Maryland’s Mita Sengupta seeks justice for her son Avishek Sengupta.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The Maryland mother of a man who died in last year’s Tough Mudder competition has filed a Wrongful Death complaint against its organizers for allegedly failing to provide sufficient safety precautions that could have saved her son’s life.
Mita Sengupta, a resident of Ellicott City (a suburb of Baltimore), filed the lawsuit in West Virginia’s Marshall County Circuit Court last month, listing several defendants and seeking an unspecified amount of damages, as well as full compensation for legal fees. Her son, 28 year-old Avishek Sengupta, drowned on April 20 of last year while participating in the Tough Mudder competition held in Gerrardstown, W.Va.
Sengupta, born and raised in Maryland, majored in math and early education at Towson University. He worked as an Account Executive for T. Rowe Price before moving on to Webmechanix, where he was a full-time Senior Account Executive at the time of his passing. He was also close to completing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Maryland’s University College.
Tough Mudder is an internationally run obstacle course race, involving 10-12 miles of grueling physical endurance as teams of competitors make their way through mud, water and soil to complete the race. The endurance race was first brought to the US in 2010, and has been run by well over one million people around the world.
According to the official complaint, which was obtained by The American Bazaar, Sengupta competed in the Tough Mudder competition with a group of friends and co-workers from Maryland. One portion of the race, about two miles in, is called “Walk the Plank,” which involves participants jointly jumping into a pool of muddy water about 13 feet deep, and then swimming through it to the other side in order to continue the race.
Sengupta and his friends jumped into the pool of water, but Sengupta was apparently struck by another jumper, which caused him to be unable to surface after falling into the water. On top of that, the complaint contends that having an unclear pool of water for swimming goes against West Virginia state regulations, and should have been grounds alone for shutting the race down.
Additionally, the complaint argues that discreet lanes should have been marked on the diving plank, and the number of jumpers at a single time should have been much smaller.
Sengupta did not surface for several minutes. After more than two minutes, Travis Pittman – the diver on hand at the time – allegedly only made cursory attempts to find Sengupta by paddling around the border of the pool. Despite having the requisite diving gear, Pittman apparently did not check to see if Sengupta had sunk all the way down.
After some more time, a diver finally went down, taking nearly a minute to reach the bottom of the pool and pull Sengupta out. By this point, Sengupta was foaming at the mouth and had gone limp. Medical efforts were made to re-establish a heartbeat, which were successful, but Sengupta still needed life support to function.
In total, it took between eight and 11 minutes to pull Sengupta from the pool, 16 more minutes to get advanced life support going for him, and a total of 42 minutes to restart his heart. The following day, April 21, Sengupta’s family made the heartbreaking decision to take him off of life support.
The complaint lists Tough Mudder LLC, Airsquad Ventures Inc., Travis Pittman, Peacemaker National Training Center, and Wheaties cereal manufacturer General Mills as defendants in the case. According to Mita Sengupta, all these parties acted together in some capacity and were jointly responsible for Sengupta’s death.
General Mills is listed because of its active sponsorship of the Tough Mudder events, while Airsquad Ventures is a company that contracted with Tough Mudder to provide amphibious medical response teams.
A source close to the trial, who spoke to The American Bazaar under the condition of anonymity, said that the case has taken so long to come to light because of separate arbitration hearings that took place in December 2013 and March of this year. Arbitration is essentially a method of fighting the case privately, and while Tough Mudder wants to keep it that way, the plaintiffs are trying to move things to a courtroom.
Right now, said the source, discussions are happening in a Baltimore conference room, but the hope is that soon enough, things will move to a West Virginia courtroom. If the trial does go to court, it won’t happen for at least another year, or perhaps even two, as both sides take time finding witnesses and gathering evidence.
A further complication is that Tough Mudder makes all its contestants sign waiver agreements, which state that any legal action taken against them must be in the form of arbitration. The plaintiff’s side is trying to determine if this arbitration agreement is enforceable in West Virginia, and if Sengupta himself even signed it.
Sengupta’s mother declined to be interviewed for this story.