KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The family of a man whose body decomposed in a parking lot for months at Kansas City International Airport is suing the company responsible for monitoring vehicles in the lot.
SP Plus Corporation and two of its employees are named as defendants in the suit, which was filed Friday by Randy Potter's widow, Carolina Potter, and his two children. The suit alleges the Delaware-based company and the employees caused "extreme trauma and emotional distress" for Potter's relatives after the defendants failed to find the Lenexa, Kan., man's body for eight months.
The company had no immediate comment on the suit.
Randy Potter's body was found last September after Kansas City police were alerted to a foul odor coming from his truck. Potter had taken his own life sometime after his relatives last saw him the previous January.
The suit alleges multiple counts of negligence, as well as interference with the right of burial and breach of contract.
"The gross negligence and failure to identify his car, despite defendant SP Plus' duty to monitor the lot 24 hours a day and to check vehicles via license plate ... is egregious and outrageous," alleges the suit, which was filed by Kansas City-based attorney John Picerno.
Blood had pooled on the pavement around Potter's truck "during the time period in which the truck sat in the lot," the suit alleges.
Potter's relatives said they were assured by SP Plus employees that if Potter's truck were in the lot, it would be found, either through a license plate tracking system or by a manual search of the lot.
SP Plus manages the 25,000 parking spaces at Kansas City International Airport, according to Kansas City spokesman Chris Hernandez.
The airport's contract with the company states that every night, SP Plus parking staff were supposed to inventory the license plates of all the vehicles in the public parking lots.
About a week after Potter's disappearance, his relatives provided SP Plus employees with a description of Potter's truck and its license plate number, the suit says.
Carolina Potter previously told The Kansas City Star that she couldn't understand why authorities didn't find her husband's body
