Daredevil sues NYC landmark for thwarting jump

A professional stunt jumper thwarted from leaping off the 86^th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building is suing the famous New York landmark, claiming its employees endangered his life.

“My life was in danger the moment they touched me,” daredevil Jeb Corliss explained to TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Thursday. “If my parachute had deployed when they had their hands on me, I would have been yanked off the edge of the building, and I would have impacted the ledge about four floors down, which most likely would have killed me. No one can touch you when you’re standing on a four-inch ledge with a parachute on your back.”

The incident high above Manhattan happened in April 2006. Corliss, wearing a mask and a “fat suit” to conceal his parachute, paid his fare and rode the elevator to the building’s observation deck.

Once there, he stripped off his disguise, put on a helmet with a camera mounted on it, and clambered over the tall fence on the deck. Before he could execute a jump he had planned for years, security guards grabbed him and handcuffed his hands and one ankle to the bars.

Video of the incident shot by an accomplice shows Corliss demanding that the guards release him. “I will fall and die if you do not let me go,” he told them.

The handcuffs only increased the danger, he said: “I told them when they handcuffed me to the bars, ‘What you’re doing, if my parachute opens, my arms will be severed.’ ”

The 31-year-old Corliss, who has jumped from the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, was arrested and charged by New York prosecutors with reckless endangerment — a felony. But, it turned out, there is no law in New York that makes it illegal to jump from buildings. In January 2007, a city judge ruled that Corliss had not acted recklessly and had broken no laws.

“I spent years preparing for this jump, learning about the wind conditions, the way the area works, studying the building and where you could actually jump the building in a safe way,” he told Lauer. “I also studied traffic patterns, when the lights turn red, how long they turned red. I watched at different times for everything.”

He said no one on the ground would have been at risk had he been able to execute his jump. When he jumped off the Petronas Towers, he said, it was as part of a New Year’s celebration paid for by the government and he landed safely in a crowd of 300,000 people.

“The concept of my parachute not opening and landing on someone on the ground, would not happen,” he said. “It’s not a case of accidents don’t happen, I wouldn’t have been deploying my parachute over human life. When I jump, I do something called tracking — I actually fly away from the building — one foot forward for every foot I drop. I deploy my parachute over the roof of the building across the street.”

Fighting back
Just the same, when he was acquitted in court, the owners of the Empire State Building sued Corliss for $12 million, claiming that his attempted leap endangered customers, tenants, visitors and employees, as well as the public at large. That suit was dismissed, and now Corliss is suing back for $30 million, claiming the guards who prevented him from jumping put his life in danger and caused him “severe emotional distress.”

He’s also claiming that the building’s owners defamed him by continuing to claim his actions were dangerous and illegal even after he was cleared of wrongdoing.

Four others had successfully parachuted from the building before Corliss’ failed attempt. The daredevils call their sport BASE jumping, an acronym for Bridge, Antenna, Span, Earth.

“The last time it was jumped, the person got to exactly the same position I got to, and the guards reached through and grabbed onto him, and he said, ‘What you’re doing right now could make me fall,’ and they let him go,” he said.

Corliss said he would have had no argument with the owners of the building or the guards if they had grabbed him before he climbed over the fence. “If they had gotten me before I got over the bars, OK, more power to them — you did your job,” he said. “But once I got over the suicide bars, their right to grab onto me ended.”

He said what the building’s owners should be doing is improving their security so that no one — BASE jumper or suicide — can get over the fence and jump. “There are buildings where no one’s ever BASE jumped and no one’s ever committed suicide off them because they have adequate security,” he said.

Corliss said he’s through with unauthorized jumps. When he was arrested after his failed attempt, he was fired as host of the Discovery Channel show “Stunt Junkies” and banned from the network.

“I’m only doing jumps where I get permits from the city and the building owner,” he told Lauer. “So I‘m never doing this type of jumping again. I’ve grown beyond that. My next thing is I’m going to be landing a wing suit without deploying a parachute.”

He denied being a thrill-seeker. “I don’t do it for the thrill of it,” he said. “When I was a small child, I always dreamt of flying, and I always had people tell me that’s impossible, people can’t fly. When I got older, I realized that they were wrong, you can fly.”

That may be. But for now, you can’t use the top of the Empire State Building as your runway.

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