A stunt double for Alex O’Loughlin’s Steve McGarrett character on Hawaii Five-O is suing CBS Corp., CBS Studios and a number of production companies over an on-set accident in which he was hit by a car. Among the allegations is that a key stunt “personnel who had safety responsibilities” was under the influence of pain pills at the time of the incident.
Justin Sundquist has doubled for the Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes in Captain America: Civil War and done stunts for other films includingThe Fate of the Furious and Kong: Skull Island. In July, he was filming a Five-O scene as O’Loughlin’s stunt double in which McGarrett was trying to catch a guy who had carjacked a motorist in a parking garage. “The speeding car struck and seriously injured Mr. Sundquist,” according to the four-count lawsuit filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court (read it here). He says the injuries he suffered “will end his career as a stunt performer.”
CBS had not responded to Deadline’s request for comment Wednesday night.
The suit alleges that a “series of reckless, negligent mishaps … caused or contributed to this accident,” including “a rushed, hectic set,” “lack of safety meeting and clear safety instructions” and “turning a blind eye to controlled substance abuse by key safety personnel.” In the last allegation, Sundquist claims that the morning of the accident, “a key personnel who had safety responsibilities was under the influence of narcotic controlled substances, which caused and/or contributed to Mr. Sundquist’s injuries and damages.” The suit adds that the unnamed individual “enticed certain stunt performers with a quid pro quo: — if they supplied him with pills, he supplied them with work.”
The suit also claims that an email was sent to various Hawaii Five-O executives about 18 months before the accident “notifying them of the safety concerns this quid pro quo situation, and the continued use and abuse of controlled substances by this key personnel, posed. Defendants … again failed to adequately address the problem and willfully and knowingly continued to allow the dangerous condition — a key safety personnel working under the influence to coordinate stunts with a high potential for danger — to exist on set.”
Sundquist, whose wife Heidi also is a plaintiff in the case, is being represented in the jury trial-seeking case by attorneys David deRubertis and Alyssa Schabloski of the deRubertis Law Firm APC in Studio City.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Deadline