Brain-damaged WSU instructor sues university over injury outside bar

A former Washington State University instructor is seeking up to $15 million from the university after he was severely injured outside a bar located on WSU property in 2013.

David Warner, now 44, spent a week in a coma and has permanent brain damage from the March 2013 incident. 

“David’s life has changed forever,” said his attorney, William Gilbert.

Warner filed a $15 million administrative claim with WSU last August. After it was rejected, Gilbert filed a lawsuit late last year in Thurston County.

Warner claims he suffered physical disability and pain, and emotional trauma from the incident, which was mostly caught on a surveillance camera. It also says he faces ongoing medical expenses.

“You have to evaluate all future and past medical costs, counseling, surgeries, hospital stays,” said Gilbert, who declined to make Warner available for comment. “That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars right there.”

A WSU spokeswoman said she could not comment on ongoing litigation.

Also named in the lawsuit are Corporate Pointe Developers, which manages the property, and Blind Squirrel LLC, operator of the Stubblefields bar. Damon Golden, owner and manager of Stubblefields, was not available for comment, and a Corporate Pointe representative declined an interview request.

Warner, an instructor in WSU’s Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at the time, was with a friend outside Stubblefields early March 30 when he was knocked to the ground. Police said Warner was trying to stop a confrontation between his friend, Lawrence J. McDonald, and others when he was critically injured.

According to the lawsuit, “the bar was crowded with patrons and the bartenders and servers were pouring liberal drinks to all comers. Lawrence McDonald became highly intoxicated after being over-served by Stubblefields.”

Whitman County prosecutors declined to file charges against four people arrested in connection with the incident, saying they didn’t have enough evidence.

The melee on March 30 was not a one-off incident at Adams Mall, which is owned by WSU and managed by Corporate Pointe Developers, the suit said. It said the property had been the site of violent incidents involving WSU students since the university bought it in 2004.

“The university was aware of the problem, has profited from the problem and hasn’t done anything about it,” Gilbert said.

According to the complaint, hundreds of assaults linked to excessive drinking at Stubblefields occur every year.

In 2011, a Pullman police officer remarked of the Adams Mall area, “every night is a fight night.”

WSU took steps to solve the problem, but they were inadequate, the lawsuit said.

“(WSU) didn’t fulfill their duties,” Gilbert said. “If you look at the complaint and the university’s own studies, you can see that.”

Following the incident with Warner, WSU President Elson Floyd convened a Commission on Campus Climate with 19 volunteers. The group was to examine the “complex underlying issues of campus climate” and make sure everyone at the university understands “the norms of civility and conduct.”

Among the commission’s recommendations, released in February, are to increase the number of police officers patrolling College Hill and implement a violence-prevention program communitywide. In addition, the report says, WSU should “Maintain possession of the Adams Mall property. The best, perhaps only, way to have any control of what happens at the property is to retain it as university real estate.”

The report notes, “We saw the Warner incident as symptomatic of larger issues having to do with social climate, tolerance, risk prone behavior, and general civility.”

Attorneys for the state of Washington have filed a motion to move the lawsuit from Thurston County to Whitman County. No trial date has been set.