Madelyn Bennett is suing University of California, Berkeley regents and the Berkeley Student Cooperative. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, she says they “knew of rampant drug abuse at the house but failed to protect the students.”
Her son, John Bennett Gibson, was a 21-year-old on March 18, 2010, when his roommate, not named in the suit, noticed that Gibson seemed to be having a bad dream at 9:00 a.m. They had taken illegal drugs the night before. About two hours later it appeared that Gibson wasn’t breathing.
The roommate performed “CPR on Gibson then moved him into another room and didn't call 911 until 1 p.m.” Gibson is currently severely brain damaged because “residents waited so long to get help, according to the suit.”
Cloyne Bennett says that the Berkeley Student Cooperative is responsible because they established house rules that “discouraged students from promptly calling police or paramedics.” Instead they had to seek permission from house leaders, and only make the calls as a “last resort.”
This "created a 'wild-west' environment at Cloyne, where residents believed that 'anything goes' and there would be no accountability for illegal drug trafficking or abuse," the suit states
Her son's care costs $300,000 a year, she said, and she decided to sue after unsuccessful efforts to get the Berkeley Student Cooperative's insurance company to pay for it.
Is UC Berkeley responsible for what happened to Cloyne Bennett's son?
"Her son's care costs $300,000 a year, she said, and she decided to sue after unsuccessful efforts to get the Berkeley Student Cooperative's insurance company to pay for it."