Daniel Kliman

Daniel Kliman

２００８年底的一天，Daniel Kliman博士曾踏進(jìn)一座電梯，按下Ｌ鍵，電梯開始滑行前往大廳，下降半層后，電梯突然停止。
幾分鐘后，Kliman，這名舊金山灣區(qū)飽受爭議的親以色列的積極分子從電梯井中跌落６０英尺死亡。６天后，人們發(fā)現(xiàn)他的尸體，人們猜測他是被謀殺的，因?yàn)樗仟q太復(fù)國主義者。死前他正準(zhǔn)備教授阿拉伯語。
這座事故電梯一個(gè)月前接受了調(diào)查，根據(jù)加州法律，卡在樓層間的電梯不允許人們從中逃出。
隨著警方的調(diào)查和舊金山法院對此案的審理，案件的起因逐漸明朗：造成死亡是因?yàn)?u>電梯故障，之前就已經(jīng)被發(fā)現(xiàn)，但一直沒修。
Kliman在舊金山猶太區(qū)有很高的聲望，他是素食者，創(chuàng)建了《以色列之聲》，用來支持以色列，遭到了巴基斯坦人和其他團(tuán)體的反對。
舊金山電臺(tái)主持人Michael Savage說：“這不是謀殺案，”他復(fù)述了一個(gè)流傳很廣的Kliman被謀殺的猜想：“他們想殺死他，就取消了他的課，然后等他出現(xiàn)。殺手把它扔下電梯井，然后找偵探證明他是自己掉下去的?？烧l會(huì)相信一個(gè)人沒事兒去強(qiáng)行開電梯門然后自殺呢？我是不相信?！?BR>Kliman的母親決定起訴電梯生產(chǎn)商通力公司和發(fā)生事故的建筑的擁有者，她不相信自己兒子是被謀殺的。他母親說：“我之前聽到和看到的消息都是假的，警察最后查明了真相。”她的陪審團(tuán)會(huì)在４月１８日去法院。
Kliman母親的陪審團(tuán)以疏忽為由起訴通力公司，要求９６０萬美元賠償。接到起訴的通力公司沒有發(fā)表看法。
Kliman夫人的律師認(rèn)為電梯故障導(dǎo)致了事故，事故調(diào)查持續(xù)了很長時(shí)間，期間被一些因素阻止?，F(xiàn)在，人們開始相信電梯故障致死的說法。
加州法律規(guī)定電梯需安裝電梯門限制器，限制器位于電梯內(nèi)門上方，用于在電梯運(yùn)行或發(fā)生乘客被困事故時(shí)，阻止乘客強(qiáng)行把門開到大于４英寸的縫隙逃生。
加州職業(yè)安全衛(wèi)生處退休的電梯官員Dee Swerrie說：“從停止的電梯中爬出來是很危險(xiǎn)的事情?！?BR>門限制器就是讓人們不要爬出電梯，等待救援。但Klima被困的電梯中的門限制器失靈，才讓他開門出去（通力公司的律師辯解稱Klima力氣太大，門限制器抵擋不住，才把門打開的）。開門后，當(dāng)?shù)涞乃庾R(shí)到自己犯了多大的錯(cuò)誤時(shí)，為時(shí)已晚。

Lawsuit Lays Out Activist’s Death by Elevator

Daniel Kliman stepped alone into a wood-paneled elevator in late 2008 and pressed the silver “L” button. The doors slid shut, and the carriage began gliding toward the lobby, but it lurched to a halt after descending just half a floor.
Minutes later, Dr. Kliman, one of the Bay Area’s most prominent and controversial pro-Israel activists, plummeted 60 feet down the elevator shaft to his death. When Dr. Kliman’s body was discovered, six days after the fatal fall, conspiracy theories blossomed, mostly alleging that he had been murdered because of his Zionist activism. Before he died, the 38-year-old internist was on the seventh floor of the historic Sharon Building, home of San Francisco’s House of Shields bar, for an evening Arabic language class. The lesson, it turned out, had been canceled.
The elevator had been inspected one month earlier, and if an elevator is up to California code, it should not be humanly possible to escape unassisted from a carriage that is stalled between floors.
But in the wake of police and state investigations and the release of numerous documents in a lawsuit filed by Dr. Kliman’s family and currently being heard in San Francisco Superior Court, a more mundane culprit has emerged as the cause of his death: An elevator malfunction that was identified during the inspection but not repaired.
Dr. Kliman was a high profile and idiosyncratic leader within the Bay Area’s Jewish community — a gay vegetarian cyclist who preached tolerance of Arabs. He co-founded Voice of Israel, which holds rallies in support of Israel when Palestinian and other activists demonstrate against it. The dueling rallies are heavily policed and often become violent.
“It’s right out of a scene from a murder mystery, isn’t it?” Michael Savage, a San Francisco shock jock, said in a Dec. 3, 2008, broadcast, as he recounted the widespread conspiracy theories. “They want to kill an activist who they hate. They cancel classes. He shows up. The killers are waiting for him. They throw him down an elevator shaft, and they get a doofus detective from San Francisco who says he fell down the shaft on his own. How in the world can a detective say he fell down the shaft when the doors would have been locked? Do you think the man pried the doors open to kill himself? I don’t.”
But Dr. Kliman’s mother — who lives in New York and is suing the elevator manufacturer Kone and the Sharon Building’s owners and managers over her son’s death — said she never believed he had be en murdered.
“What I have seen from the reports and what I’ve heard, that was not true; it was ruled out fairly early by the police department,” said Edith Kliman, whose suit is scheduled to go before a jury on April 18. “I have no reason to believe anything else.” Mrs. Kliman’s suit alleges negligence and seeks $9.6 million in damages.
Kone declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Officials and lawyers for Mrs. Kliman point to a malfunction in the elevator, unrelated to what caused the carriage to stall, in explaining Dr. Kliman’s death. It took a long time to establish the cause of the accident, in part because some critical records were withheld from investigators. But everyone involved now agrees on the unlikely sequence of events that led to the fatal fall.
California regulations require door restrictors to be installed on elevators. They sit above an elevator’s internal doors and prevent them from being opened more than four inches when the carriage is traveling or stuck between floors.
“Getting people out of an elevator that has stopped between floors is always a risky business,” said Dee Swerrie, a retired senior elevator official at the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “People get panicky.”
Door restrictors force passengers who are trapped inside a stalled elevator to wait for help, protecting them from deadly risks that are not easily understood from inside the carriage.
But the door restrictor in the elevator carrying Dr. Kliman was broken, allowing him to force open the door with his hands. (In court documents, lawyers for Kone argued that Dr. Kliman was strong enough that he could have forced open a door restrictor.) After opening the doors, state officials concluded, he fell into a deadly trap that is well understood within the elevator industry.