Good Samaritan Suit Over Murder Dismissed
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Three years ago, a chance meeting in Manhattan with a college classmate led Mark Fisher to a night of bar-hopping that ended in Prospect Park South, where, surrounded by strangers, he was murdered.
The classmate, Angel DiPietro, was cleared of liability for the murder last week, when a state judge in Brooklyn ruled that Fisher’s parents couldn’t sue her for introducing Fisher to his killers.
The parents, Michael and Nancy Fisher, brought the suit under New York’s Good Samaritan law, arguing that Ms. DiPietro had taken charge that night and had a duty to keep their son safe.
The two were classmates at Fairfield University in Connecticut, and had run into each other at an Upper East Side bar. Ms. DiPietro helped arrange for Fisher, then 19, to stay at a friend of a friend’s home that night in Prospect Park. That man, John Giuca, and another man were convicted of murdering Fisher as part of a gang initiation.
The judge, Lawrence Knipel, said Ms. DiPietro’s role in the events leading up to the shooting was peripheral.
