The mother of Morgan Harrington has filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the company that provided security at John Paul Jones Arena the night Morgan went missing, Gil Harrington confirmed to News 7 tonight.
The $3.5 million dollar lawsuit is filed against Regional Marketing Concepts, Inc. which operates as RMC events.
The lawsuit was filed just a few days shy of the two year anniversary of Morgan Harrington's disappearance and just before the two year statute of limitations would have run out. "This gives us the option of moving forward to find some answers," Gil Harrington said. "We filed a lawsuit to preserve our options."
Morgan Harrington went missing after leaving a Metallica concert at the Arena two years ago today, October 17, 2009. The 20 year old left the Arena at about 8:30pm and was not allowed back in by arena staff, according to Virginia State Police.
Morgan Harrington was last seen on the Copeley Road bridge in Charlottesville about one hour later at 9:30 that night. It was more than two months later, in January, 2010, that a farmer found her skeletal remains in a remote area of the Anchorage Farm in Albemarle County.
Gil Harrington describes the past two years as a fog. "There are so many layers of this onion that we've been working on in a parallel fashion," Gil Harrington said.
"We're trying to grieve. We're trying to find a killer. We're trying to do good work to make a positive legacy for Morgan. We're trying to protect other women. This is just another layer of this onion. We needed to make a place holder for it," Harrington said.
"We didn't feel we had the clarity to let that option dissolve," Gil Harrington said. "This gives us the option to try and find the answer to some of our questions."
Some of those questions may have to do with why a young woman would not be allowed back in the arena after dark, how the lighting was around the arena at the time of the concert, and how many people made up the security staff that night. Arena officials have said it's arena policy that once a person's ticket has been scanned by a computer system, that person is not allowed to leave the arena and come back in.
