FIS, Kasper react to Lanzinger lawsuit

FIS President Gian-Franco Kasper said he is not surprised that Austrian racer Matthias Lanzinger, who lost his lower leg in the wake of a crash during a World Cup race in Norway, will file a lawsuit seeking damages. “I expected this from the first day. It is normal after a bad crash,” Kasper told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
FIS President Gian-Franco Kasper said he is not surprised that Austrian racer Matthias Lanzinger, who lost his lower leg in the wake of a crash during a World Cup race in Norway, will file a lawsuit seeking damages. “I expected this from the first day. It is normal after a bad crash,” Kasper told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
     Kasper did not want to comment further because the case was ongoing. The FIS did confirm in a statement Monday that it had received a set of documents related to Lanzinger's accident from a group of Vienna-based lawyers and had forwarded them to its legal expert.
     “These documents specifically refer to delay in transport of the patient to treatment and mistakes with the medical treatment by the university hospital of Oslo, as identified by an expertise from a Munich-based doctor,” the statement said.
     Contacted by Austrian Press Agency APA, FIS men’s race director Guenter Hujara also would not comment because he had not yet seen all details of the claim issued by Lanzinger's lawyer, Manfred Ainedter, to the FIS on Monday.
     Lanzinger crashed during a World Cup super-G race March 2 in Kvitfjell, Norway, fracturing his lower left leg and sustaining vascular injuries that eventually led to the amputation a few days later.
     Based on an expert's report by the Munich vascular surgeon Bernd Steckmaier, Ainedter said that several delays and wrong treatment may have been the reason for the amputation.
     The FIS has denied any negligence in the Lanzinger case and local organizers also said they have done nothing wrong.