Suit Filed Over Battle at Prep Basketball Game in 1986

Two players injured in a brawl during a basketball game at Bishop Montgomery High School nearly two years ago have filed a lawsuit blaming the Torrance school, its coach and two administrators.

Matthew and Gregory Willig, brothers who played for the St. Paul High School basketball team, charged that a fight involving players and fans erupted on Feb. 7, 1986, because officials at Bishop Montgomery provided inadequate supervision.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Torrance Superior Court, does not specify damages.

The suit charges that the Rev. Patrick Comerford, the school’s principal; the Rev. Leslie Esposito, the athletic director, and Coach Tim Haley permitted violent players to be on the Bishop Montgomery team and unruly fans to sit near the court in the school’s gymnasium. Also named as defendants are Ken Sale, who played for Bishop Montgomery, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Lack of Security Cited

“There were no police or security people of any kind at the game. It was just the referees,” said attorney C. Thomas Drosman, who is representing the Willigs.

Bishop Montgomery administrators did not return phone calls seeking comment, and an archdiocese official declined to comment, saying she had not seen the suit. Sale, in an interview, said neither he nor Bishop Montgomery officials should be blamed for the fracas.

Newspaper accounts of the Angelus League game said that Bishop Montgomery trailed 54-49 with 3:46 left in the game when a fight broke out among several players. Both teams’ benches cleared, and other students and adults joined in the melee, according to the accounts.

John Scott, a St. Paul guard, was hit on the head and knocked unconscious by a chair thrown from the stands; Matthew Willig was pushed to the floor and kicked in the face, and Bishop Montgomery guard Brian Dell’Amico suffered a black eye, according to the newspaper stories.

Referees canceled the remainder of the game and St. Paul was declared the winner.

Four Fans Prosecuted

Two teen-age fans were arrested and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of fighting in public. Two other fans were also prosecuted but court officials would not release the results of their cases because they were minors.

Sale recalled last week that the fight began when he squared off with Matthew Willig. “First it was just the team fighting and then the fans,” Sale said.

But Sale, now a football player at El Camino College in Torrance, said there was hostility on both sides and that he and the Bishop Montgomery officials should not be blamed.

The Willigs come from a long line of star athletes at St. Paul High, which is in Santa Fe Springs. Four older brothers went on to play college football.

Drosman said the brothers both suffered cuts and bruises on their heads and faces. He said that although the Willigs filed the lawsuit, the family hopes to resolve the matter in informal negotiations.

Alleged Cases of Violence

The lawsuit charges that Bishop Montgomery employees “should have known that physical attacks on players of opposing teams by spectators had occurred before” and that the school’s basketball players “had a known propensity to threaten and to strike players of opposing teams.” Drosman said there had been several instances of violence but he did not have details.

The administrators and coach failed, according to the suit, “to control or eject violence-prone spectators or to control or discipline its own players.”

The two schools have competed in several sports without incident since the brawl, according to St. Paul Athletic Director Leo Gutierrez.