WORCESTER, Mass. (Legal Newsline) – A lieutenant in a Massachusetts fire department is suing a fitness testing company that he says made him try a squat exercise that resulted in him injuring himself.
Robert Bates and his wife Kristie sued O2X Human Performance in Worcester County Superior Court on Feb. 19 after a “pistol squat” gone wrong. O2X conducts fitness tests and physical training for first responders.
But on Sept. 26, 2018, its employees failed to properly assess whether Bates, then a lieutenant in the Worcester fire department, could perform the pistol squat. He fell during the exercise, the suit says, sustaining a serious injury.
“If the O2X employee had conducted an adequate inquiry into Plaintiff’s medical history, level of fitness, or his ability to perform a pistol squat safely, the employee would have known it was unsafe for Plaintiff to attempt to perform a pistol squat,” the lawsuit says.
“Plaintiff’s injury was proximately caused by the careless and negligent conduct of the physical fitness evaluation by the employees of Defendant O2X.”