Confidential Settlement After Four-Year-Old Falls 18 Feet Through Escalator Gap at Auburn Mall Sears

On March 11, 2011, a four-year-old boy from Dudley, Massachusetts, was at the Sears store inside the Auburn Mall with his mother and family when he slipped through a gap between the second-floor escalator and the adjoining railing. He fell approximately 18 feet onto a display case below, suffering severe head injuries. He died in the hospital the next day. His heart was donated to another child.

State investigators who examined the escalator after the accident found the gap measured 6 inches wide. Massachusetts building code required the gap to be smaller, and state safety rules further required a barricade when the gap exceeded the prescribed limit. No barricade was in place. Two state escalator inspectors who had previously certified the Sears escalator as safe were later suspended without pay; the incident prompted a statewide re-inspection of the roughly 975 escalators subject to annual review in Massachusetts.

In June 2011, the boy's parents, Eric and Laura DiBona of Dudley, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Worcester Superior Court. W. Thomas Smith of Sugarman and Sugarman, P.C., in Boston filed the complaint on behalf of the family. The defendants were Sears, Roebuck and Co., which operated the store; Schindler Elevator Corp., the escalator manufacturer and maintenance contractor; Simon Property Group Inc. and its mall subsidiaries, which owned and operated the Auburn Mall; and Botany Bay Construction Co. of Worcester, the contractor responsible for the escalator installation. The complaint alleged that the gap was dangerous and defective and that each defendant bore responsibility for failing to correct or report the condition.

The case was resolved in early 2014 with a confidential settlement covering all defendants. The terms were not disclosed. A lawyer for the DiBona family confirmed the settlement to the Telegram and Gazette but declined to discuss the amount.

The boy's death and the resulting regulatory scrutiny accelerated safety reforms. A sweep conducted after the incident found that roughly 7.5 percent of Massachusetts escalators lacked the barricades required by code.