Internet trolls say Adriana Chechik’s TwitchCon injury is her fault. Video Game Attorney is calling bullshit.

By 10/19/2022
Internet trolls say Adriana Chechik’s TwitchCon injury is her fault. Video Game Attorney is calling bullshit.

The video is brutal to watch.

Adriana Chechik is all smiles, jumping up and down on a spotlighted pedestal in the middle of a pit filled with a layer of black foam blocks. As TwitchCon attendees cheer, she leaps from the pedestal, does a split midair, and lands rear-first in the pit.

Immediately, something is wrong. She curls in on herself and rolls onto her stomach.

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“I can’t get out,” she says.

A staffer leans in and asks if she’s okay. She shakes her head, then calls for a medic.

The pit’s loudspeakers blare over the crowd. “Nah, she’s fine,” an announcer says.

She was not fine. When Chechik—a Twitch streamer and adult entertainer—landed in the shallow pit Oct. 9, she slammed into Petco Park‘s concrete floor. The impact “completely crushed” several vertebrae, plus dealt nerve damage to her bladder, Chechik later tweeted. She’s since needed two separate surgeries and is undergoing intensive physical therapy.

Chechik was not the only one injured in the foam pit, which was sponsored by technology company Lenovo. Streamer LochVaness said jumping into it dislocated her knee, and while her kneecap was put back in place by attending medics at the con, it may also require surgery in the future.

Now, you may be an optimist and think that news of Chechik and LochVaness’s injuries sparked sympathy.

But this is the internet, so of course not. Chechik in particular has been swarmed by Twitter denizens eager to claim she’s the one at fault for jumping into the pit. Direct replies to her tweets and tweets about her situation are rife with respondents crowing about how she signed a waiver before participating in the pit (which is true), making TwitchCon, Lenovo, and other organizers free from responsibility, and how she should’ve somehow known better before jumping into a recreational pit that’s designed to be jumped into.

So…are those people right?

Not according to Ryan Morrison. Perhaps better known as Video Game Attorney, Morrison is one of the founding partners of Los Angeles-based legal firm Morrison Rothman LLP, and is the founder and CEO of esports-focused Evolved Talent Agency.

Morrison isn’t involved in any litigation with TwitchCon or Chechik, but he was present at the convention and is familiar with the kind of waiver she and other participants signed.

“I can tell you someone is responsible, and it’s not Adriana,” he tells Tubefilter. “Those waivers have existed for a long time […] and typically all that does is shift normal negligence to the other side. So if something a little trepidacious happened, something a little off the normal path, that’s regular negligence and you take the burden.”

Morrison thinks what happened with the foam pit escalated beyond regular negligence and into gross negligence, which is significantly more serious.

“I saw there was posts from Lenovo or Twitch basically saying, ‘Jump in. It’s fun. Do a dive,'” he says. “Having done that and encouraging it when it’s not prepared for that, is certainly not thick or deep enough for that…Knowing what I know, I would assume those waivers are not gonna do much to protect them and she’s going to have quite a successful case here, along with the other people injured.”

Morrison says the pit was “one layer of foam bricks on top of a seemingly not-so-soft surface.” Foam pits are generally advised to be at least four feet deep, and should have padding beneath the foam blocks in case anyone does manage to hit the floor.

On top of saying he thinks Chechik has a “strong” legal case, Morrison criticizes “anime avatar trolls on Twitter” for being quick to blame her.

“If there’s a question of who’s right or wrong, and one of the people is a woman, they just jump into why she’s wrong,” he says. “It’s a toxic community and they seemingly just get joy out of it. They’ll find a reason every single time, and those reasons are ridiculous. Blaming someone for jumping into a foam pit that’s supposed to break your fall…That’s not her fault.”

Chechik has not said whether she intends to pursue legal action against anyone responsible for setting up the foam pit. She’s currently chronicling her recovery.

Tubefilter reached out to Twitch for comment on Chechik’s situation. Twitch’s PR team declined to comment, and instead referred us to Lenovo. In a statement, Lenovo said that following Chechik and LochVaness’s injuries, the pit was closed, and it’s currently “work[ing] with event organizers to look into the incidents.”

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