Zuckerberg company implicated in wrongful death lawsuit

LIHU‘E — Rodney Medeiros was working a 12-hour shift as a security guard at the Kaua‘i ranch owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan when he died of a heart attack three years ago.

Now, surviving family members have filed a claim against Ko‘olau Ranch property companies, claiming negligence led to Medeiros’s death.

According to the complaint, Mederios, 70, a was working part-time for contracted security company Spaca LLC.

On Aug. 4, 2019, he was assigned to guard a remote post on Pila‘a Beach, while Zuckerberg and Chan were visiting the island. His job was to report any beach goers who passed by.

Usually, a security cart picked Mederios up from his post, but due to rainy conditions that day, the cart could not reach his remote location. When his shift ended at around 6 p.m., Mederios needed to walk up a steep, muddy access trail.

Several minutes after he began up the trail, another guard discovered Mederios leaning up against a tree, complaining that his chest hurt.

Medics transported him the roughly 20 miles to the Wilcox Medical Center in Lihu‘e, where he died early the next morning.

Queen’s Medical Center cardiologist John Cogan M.D., independently reviewed Medeiros’s medical information. In a report provided to The Garden Island, he said that while Medeiros had “multiple risk factors for the development of the disease,” “climbing the hill as part of completing work was a substantial factor in precipitating the acute event.”

Attorneys for the family say the owners of the property, Pila’a Land LLC and Pila’a International LLC, and the security company Limitless Specialty Services Associates LLC, had a duty to do more to provide Medeiros with safe passage back from his post.

According to attorney Michael Stern, who filed the complaint for the family with a team of attorneys, a small investment in safeguards for the wheels of the cart would have allowed it to travel down the trail to pick up Medeiros.

“They have a duty to get those people up safely, and they breached it by not putting the proper safeguards on the wheels,” Stern said.

A spokesperson for the Zuckerberg family, emphasized the quick treatment that Medeiros received from on-site medics.

“Ko‘olau Ranch extends our deepest sympathies to the family of Rodney Medeiros for their tragic loss,” said spokesperson Ben Labolt.

“All vehicles at Ko‘olau Ranch are professionally maintained on an ongoing basis,” said LaBolt. “Additionally, there is a training program all drivers must undergo in order to operate vehicles at the ranch.”

The suit was filed by family members Richard Medeiros, Leila Kuhaulua and Ziba Medeiros.

The family later received a $7,500 check from the Zuckerberg family.

Mederios’s family was not informed until several hours after his death, and were not filled in on the details of the situation until days later.

In a recording provided to The Garden Island taken days after the incident, a Limitless security manager describes the circumstances around the incident.

On the tape, family members express frustration at the amount of time it took for them to be informed.

“I can totally understand. I was like, why can’t they just tell them,” said the manager in the recording.

The manager says they had dealt with the carts being unable to travel in rainy conditions multiple times before.

The complaint, filed last year, has moved slowly through the courts as lawyers struggle to serve the papers because of the convoluted ownership of the land by various Zuckerberg-connected LLCs.

“This is much more difficult than it usually is,” said Stern. “And I’ve been doing this for 35 years in four states.”

Attorneys for Pila‘a Land LLC, one of the companies named in the lawsuit, issued a response to the complaint Aug. 15, in which they contest many elements of the complaint and request that it be dismissed.