A graduate student who was hit by a pizza delivery driver blames the Naked Pizza company for encouraging unsafe practices to ensure speedy delivery.
PRINCETON - The whole food pizza chain, Naked Pizza, shuttered the doors of its Princeton shop in November but a month later, both the closed up shop and the national company are coming under fire.
A Princeton University graduate student blames the chain and the Princeton shop in particular, of implementing and encouraging unsafe practices with their drivers that led to her getting hit by a car last spring, according to a lawsuit filed in December.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Mercer County Superior Court on behalf of student Nyssa Emerson, named the national Naked Pizza chain, former Princeton store manager Kathy Vik and driver Stephen Cruz as defendants. The store sat at its Nassau Street location for four years until it closed last month.
The suit references an accident in early April involving Emerson and Cruz, who was delivering pizzas for the Princeton store. Emerson was crossing Washington Road around 9:30 p.m. when Cruz crashed into her with his car, sending her to the hospital with serious injuries, police said at the time.
Emerson's attorney Richard Brockway called her injuries "catastrophic," Tuesday. He said that she had back injuries, including a spinal chord injury and that she had to postpone her studies at Princeton University for a semester.
But Brockway believes the accident wasn't a simple case of a driver's mistake - Cruz was preoccupied with a GPS or another type of device that caused him to hit Emerson, Brockway said.
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"Naked Pizza mandated the use of the GPS that distracted the driver," Brockway said, adding that he believes that's not the only unsafe practice the whole food pizza chain encourages.
In the lawsuit, Brockway claimed the company, "created, implemented and enforced tragically unsafe business practices," in order to live up to their promise of delivering pizzas within 25 minutes.
"(Naked Pizza is) constantly competing through speedy delivery," Brockway said.
He outlined the practices in the lawsuit. Brockway claims the practices include enforcing the 25-minute rule; tracking, recording and giving evaluations to drivers based on their delivery time; and providing pay incentives to competing drivers based on their delivery times.
It was during an investigation, Brockway said, that he found a training video which supported his claims.
Vik declined to comment on the lawsuit or the allegations Tuesday and a representative for Naked Pizza could not be reached.
The suit - while a first for Naked Pizza - is not unheard of in the food delivery business.
In a highly publicized case in the late 1980's, a woman was hit by a Domino's Pizza driver, who was rushing to make a 30-minute delivery window. The woman sued and was awarded $78 million from the pizza delivery giant chain. The case led Domino's Pizza to do away with their 30-minute delivery pledge.
But Naked Pizza, less than a decade old, still touts the idea of healthy pizza, quick delivery, the lawsuit said. And even though the Princeton branch has since closed, Brockway thinks it's an idea that should be challenged.
"They sacrifice safety for speed," he said.
Anna Merriman may be reached at amerriman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @anna_merriman Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.