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The Leaping Lawyer Urban Legend

The Leaping Lawyer - The Lawyer Who Plunged To His Death

The Urban Legend You May Not Know Is Based On A Real Incident

Photo by photo nic on Unsplash

You have probably heard of this Urban legend: A lawyer crashes himself into the window of his top-floor skyscraper office, only to find himself taking the aerial route to the ground floor. In other words- plunging to his death as the window gives way.

The urban legend is not fiction. This incident indeed took place in Toronto in the year 1993. The fall guy(literally) was Garry Hoy, who worked as a corporate and securities law specialist on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre.

Before you JUMP to conclusions, Garry Hoy was not drunk or high on any drugs. He was not stupid, and he was not possessed either.

 Garry Hoy - Source : Link

The 38-year-old was a successful lawyer at the Holden Day Wilson Law firm in Toronto.

Life was good for Garry; he was young, well respected, and had a promising career ahead of him. Tick suicide off the list as well.

Garry did not intentionally plunge to his death from his 24th-floor office building; it was an accident.

The Toronto Dominion Bank Tower( in the middle) where Garry fell to his death from. Source : Wiki Media Commons

He was demonstrating the sturdiness of the glass window in his office by throwing his full weight at it — a demo that he had successfully executed in the many times past. Every time he did that, he would bounce off the window. But not this time.

On July 9, 1993, Garry threw himself at the glass window again; his audience, a group of articling students, watched in horror as the window popped out of its frame, and Garry Hoy went down with it.

The glass did not shatter; Garry was right about its tensile strength. It seems the repeated beating had loosened the frame’s grip over the glass, and it finally gave way.

Garry’s unusual death won him a Darwin award. It’s an honor bestowed by a web society that “recognizes individuals who eliminate themselves in extraordinarily idiotic ways.”

Alessandro Nivola re-enacted his death in the 2006 movie The Darwin Awards:

https://youtu.be/ZVVnm9c5pmQ

His death also featured in MythBusters and 1000 ways to die.

Garry Hoy’s death is often the subject of light-hearted moments, but people forget the man lost his life and left his family devastated.

Just three years after the death of Garry, the Holden Day Wilson Law firm ran into financial troubles and officially shut down in 1996.

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