Gathers’ Family Likely to File Suit on Friday : Basketball: Lawyer says action stemming from death of Loyola Marymount player will involve six counts and name 14 defendants.

After several weeks of legal banter, the first lawsuit regarding the death of Hank Gathers is expected to be filed Friday in Los Angeles.

Bruce Fagel, the Beverly Hills attorney for the Gathers family, said he will file six separate counts naming 14 different defendants in a 52-page complaint. Fagel said he will disclose details Friday at a news conference.

It will be the first suit filed since Gathers, a Loyola Marymount basketball player, collapsed March 4 while playing in a game at Gersten Pavilion and was pronounced dead 1 hour 40 minutes later. The cause of death was a heart disorder called cardiomyopathy.

The defendants named in the complaint are expected to be Loyola Marymount University, its employees and doctors who treated Gathers from the time of his first collapse on Dec. 9 until his death.

The six separate causes of action fall into one of three areas: the emotional distress suffered by family members present at the time Gathers collapsed; lack of informed consent, which deals with whether Gathers was informed of the risks of treatment by doctors and consented to that treatment; and wrongful death.

One of the wrongful death claims is an alleged failure of those attending Gathers to resuscitate him properly after he collapsed.

By filing the complaint, Fagel will be allowed to subpoena records to which he has not had access. Primarily, this includes videotape of Gathers’ collapse on March 4 and the events that transpired shortly thereafter. Several television stations and ESPN were taping the incident. The tape could show how Gathers was treated--and by whom--when he collapsed.

Fagel represents Gathers’ mother, Lucille; brothers Derrick and Charles and aunt Carol Livingston. Gathers’ son, 6-year old Aaron Crump, is represented by Martin Krimsky and Adrian Moody, both of Philadelphia, and Kenneth Wolf, of Los Angeles.

Aaron lives with his mother, Marva Crump, in Philadelphia.

Krimsky, Moody and Wolf, who have been at odds with Fagel in the past, say they have patched up their differences with him. However, they plan to file separate suits even though in California similar suits are often combined and one judgment rendered.

Attorneys for Aaron are expected to file a wrongful death suit on his behalf in the next three weeks. Krimsky, however, will also file an additional suit on behalf of the estate, seeking payment of a $1-million disability policy Gathers held with Lloyds of London. The suit, though, will not be against Lloyds.

Krimsky contends that had Gathers not suffered a wrongful death, which the suit is expected to allege, Gathers would have collected on the policy in the event of a career-ending injury.

Gathers purchased the policy after he decided to forgo the NBA draft his junior year.