N.J. SUIT OK DESPITE WAIVER:

New Jersey Appeals Court has ruled that a waiver signed by participants in high risk sports activities does not prevent relatives from pursuing a wrongful death suit when the sports enthusiast is killed. It is common for instructional facilities for scuba diving, skydiving and similar risky activities to ask participants to sign waivers shielding them from lawsuits if injury or death results. A state appeals court has declared those release forms do not bar relatives from filing a wrongful death lawsuit. Justice Jose L. Fuentes, writing for the three-judge panel, in the case of the late Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Eugene J. Pietroluongo, 44, of Orange, who died in a scuba diving accident in Pennsylvania in 2001, ruled that Pietroluongo’s 13-year-old daughter had the right to sue the Regency Diving Center in Millburn. The court said that a waiver “like any contract, can only bind the individuals who signed it.” Thus it could not deprive his survivors of their rights to bring a wrongful death lawsuit. The case is Bonnie Gershon, et al. v. Regency Driving Center Inc., et al.