The wife of a man who died while attending a fitness class decided to sue the company for negligence. She believes that the company is solely responsible for her husband's untimely death.
According to South China Morning Post, Jiang Huiyu recently filed a lawsuit at the High Court on behalf of her late significant other named Richard Wong Ying-ki. The latter reportedly died at the age of 57, after a core muscle training session at the Kwun Tong gym branch in 2015.
The widow was joined by Chan Suk-yee, who is an executor of Wong's estate, in the civil suit. The legal action stated Fitness First (Hong Kong) as the defendant. Further details were revealed via a court document made available on Wednesday.
It came just two months after a jury at the Coroner's Court ruled that Wong, who suffered from heart disease, died of natural causes. During the four-day hearing in July, it was found out that the Kwun Tong center had no specialized trainers who could efficiently operate an automatic external defibrillator (AED). If they had, Wong would have still been alive today.
The court document also detailed that the widow and Chan were claiming damages over Wong's death "as a consequence of the negligence of the defendant" and its staff. It did not detail the amount sought, though.
Yahoo! News reports that according to inquest testimony, the postmortem examination revealed that three of victim's coronary arteries were between 80 and 90 percent blocked when he died.
Wong, a human resources director at a textile company signed up for the training. Apparently, his wife has no knowledge of it, let alone his training session that took place on September 29, 2015.
Reports say that the man passed out in the middle of the class. But before that, he already talked about how "tough" the training was. Unfortunately, the trainer did not mine it, as he thought it was only a general comment. The investigation further stated that the trainer believed Wong was resting until she decided to pat him on the shoulder but got no response.
She immediately sought help from a manager, who performed resuscitation on Wong but to no avail. The manager, on the other hand, called the police and admitted that they did not use the AED, believing no one at the center knew how to use it.
The inquest ended with the jury suggesting that training courses be provided to teach the coaches how to use the machines.
