A surfer dead, a thirty-million dollar sale of the
park blocked pending the verdict, allegations of fraud.
(Editor’s note: Over the next two weeks, we’ll
be running a four-part investigative series on BSR Surf Resort by
Cedar Hobbs, whom you already know and perhaps secretly love. Was
New Jersey surfer Fabrizio Stabile’s death caused by a negligence
and the matter covered up, as alleged by his family in their
ongoing wrongful death lawsuit? Was the pool’s water, dyed a
fabulous blue-green, coloured to cover “a pathogen soup” in
which deadly bacteria thrived? Today, part one, the background of
the death and the lawsuit.)
On September 8, 2018, New Jersey surfer Fabrizio Stabile
and a group of friends visited the BSR Surf Resort.
Less than two weeks later, Stabile, who was twenty-nine, died in
a hospital bed.
His death was attributed to a brain-eating amoeba; his
physicians calling it primary amoebic meningoencephalitis and
Naegleria fowleri infection of the central nervous system.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
Naegleria fowleri “infects people when water containing the ameba
enters the body through the nose.” Infections cannot occur from
drinking contaminated water.
Infections are extremely rare. From 2010 to 2019, only 34
infections were reported in the U.S.
They tend to occur during the summer months, “when it is hot for
prolonged periods of time, which results in high water temperatures
and lower water levels.”
The fatality rate is over 97%. Only four people out of 143
infected in the United States between 1962 and 2017 have survived
after contracting the amoeba, according to the CDC.
Seven months after his death, Stabile’s parents filed a suit
against BSR Surf Resort, owned by Stuart Parsons, in the District
Court of McLennan County, Texas, for more than a $1 million.
The complaint claimed that Fabrizio Stabile was exposed to the
amoeba at BSR.
The Stabiles alleged gross negligence, asserting that BSR “had
subjective awareness of the risks involved, but nevertheless
proceeded with conscious indifference to the rights, safety, and/or
welfare or others.”
They additionally asserted a premises liability claim, arguing
that BSR knew, or should have known, that there was a substantial
risk of a recreational water illness that posed “an unreasonable
risk of death or serious bodily harm to Fabrizio Stabile.”
Lastly, they asserted a wrongful death claim, asserting that
Stabile died as a result of BSR’s wrongful conduct.
In December 2019, apparently in response to a pending sale of
BSR, the Stabiles filed a motion to protect the cash sale
proceeds.
According to the motion, only a month after the filing of the
lawsuit, “Parsons entered into discussions to sell the assets of
BSR.” Notably, the sale would have apparently separated the
liabilities, where they would have been kept in “shell corporate
entities” owned by Parsons.
It further alleged that the pending transfer was fraudulent, as
evidenced by an alleged “massive chlorination of the surf pool”
prior to a CDC inspection and alleged false statements to the press
“about the pre-inspection chlorination.”
The Stabiles detailed several other examples of behavior that
they contended showed that Parson’s had “a tendency toward
fraud.”
These included the alleged destruction of evidence through a
chlorination of the surf pool the day before a CDC inspection.
And the fact that Parsons allegedly “set up numerous LLC[s] and
trusts, all of which he [was] the sole owner and officer [of].”
The last was an alleged event in which Parsons lost his phone in
Lake Whitney “just before being required to produce the text
messages in discovery.”
BSR filed a response that same month. They asserted that the
motion for protection of cash sales was “extraordinary and
unprecedented” as it requested the Court to hold proceeds from a
non-fraudulent transfer.
BSR denied that there had a been a hyper-chlorination of the
pool prior to the inspection, arguing that CDC test results had in
fact shown that chlorine was not detected.
They further denied that Parsons had lied to the press.
They also called the allegation that Parsons had “purposefully”
dropped his phone in Lake Whitney “nothing more than mere
conjecture,” as the text messages sought were later recovered and
produced by a forensic data expert.
On December 21, 2019, the presiding judge submitted an order
that required BSR to preserve the proceeds of the sale, effectively
stopping the sale.
BSR appealed the order in January 2020, arguing that order
should have been vacated as it failed to satisfy the relevant legal
requirements, calling it “a sword over the Defendants’ neck held at
the whim of the Plaintiffs” and an attempt to force a
settlement.
In a brief filed January 7, 2020, BSR pushed back on the notion
that Stabile had been infected at BSR, asserting “no one has made a
judicial finding that Stabile was infected in the only body of
water that he visited at BSR.” They further implied that Stabile
may have contracted the amoeba at his job at the New Jersey
Department of Environmental Protection, which “involved collection
of water samples.”
BSR additionally claimed that the sale was not fraudulent,
asserting that there was no evidence of attempts to destroy
evidence.
The brief called the pending sale “an arm’s length transaction
for a fair price.”
The court denied the motion and later referred the case to
mediation.
BSR rejected that order in March, calling mediation
“impractical” and claiming that further time to consider mediators
would “not aid in an agreement,” leaving the parties in a
stalemate.
Oral argument is scheduled for November 3.
