Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Global Entertainment, Texas city hit with wrongful death lawsuit

When Maura Quintanilla gave birth to her seventh child in early November, for the first time her husband was not with her. Florentino "Tino" Quintanilla had been with his wife when each of their first six children had been born over a 15-year period, but he was not there this time...and he would never be there again.
The blame for that, Mrs. Quintanilla said in a lawsuit filed in November in 332nd State District Court in Hidalgo County, Texas, goes to Global Entertainment Corporation. Mr. Quintanilla, 46, was working for Global's subsidiary, International Coliseums Company, Inc., when he was killed at the Dodge Arena in Hidalgo on Oct. 31.
According to the McAllen, Texas, Monitor, Mr. Quintanilla died after "some heavy-duty glass panels removed from the hockey rink's dasher boards fell on him." The police investigation indicated as many as 13 glass panels weighing 2,700 pounds fell on him "leaving him covered in blood fro his face and arms," according to the police incident report.
At the time, he and other workers were converting the arena from being used for hockey to prepare for a Lluvia deEstrellas concert scheduled for the next day.
Global, which is interested in managing a similar facility in Joplin, is not the only defendant in the case, according to a Jan. 13 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also named as a defendant is the City of Hidalgo Texas Municipal Facilities Corporation, which was set up by the city as the official owner of the arena.
As noted in yesterday's Turner Report, Global Entertainment is the defendant in at least two other lawsuits filed over the past few months.

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