Health-club chain LA Fitness must pay $619,650 to the family of a Fort
Lauderdale man who died of sudden cardiac arrest while working out at an
Oakland Park gym, a Broward Circuit Court jury ordered Wednesday.

The jury needed only two hours of deliberations to find that LA Fitness'
negligence contributed to Alessio Tringali's death. No one attempted to
perform CPR on the dying 49-year-old man and the club didn't have an
automated external defibrillator that could have saved his life, argued
Russell Adler, the attorney for Tringali's family.

The case is believed to be one of the first in the country where a
health club has been held liable for failing to have a defibrillator on
site, Adler said.

"It is a symbolic verdict and a therapeutic verdict because it sends a
loud message to the health club industry that they need to do a better
job to protect their members when they have a medical emergency," Adler
said.

Adler had asked jurors to award $10 million to the Tringali family.

LA Fitness officials could not be reached for for comment on Wednesday.
Gene Kissane, an attorney for LA Fitness, declined to discuss the
verdict.

In closing arguments, Kissane told jurors that Tringali's death on April
3, 2003, was inevitable, comparing his heart to a time bomb. The chance
of surviving a sudden cardiac attack outside a hospital is 5 percent, he
said.

In addition, it wasn't common practice at health clubs at that time to
have defibrillators, he said.

Adler said LA Fitness facilities now have defibrillators.