Bridging Liability

The death of Cornell University student Bradley Ginsburg, who committed suicide in February 2010 by jumping off the City of Ithaca’s Thurston Avenue Bridge, has provoked a $180 million negligence lawsuit from his father, Howard Ginsburg. In his federal lawsuit filed in upstate New York on Nov. 21, Ginsburg alleges the university suppressed information about a string of suicides in late 2009 on the Ithaca, N.Y. Ivy League campus and failed to take action to make the bridge safer, by installing barriers to deter someone from trying to jump from the bridge, according to news reports.