Drowning Accidents Expected to Increase as Theme Parks Reopen
As schools and public recreation venues begin to reopen this Fall, public safety experts are warning of an increase in the number of drowning deaths and water-related injuries. In today’s post our drowning accident lawyer reviews the legal principles of water safety and the question of liability should such a tragic accident occur.
Most of the major, for-profit, theme park chains have been planning for their eventual reopening since the first mandatory closings were announced. As an example, the Six Flags parks have already published their plans and procedures for reopenings that will take into consideration every local and state guidelines that my apply to each property. However, we have noticed a distinct lack of such public announcements from privately-owned and non-profit facilities! According to our drowning accident lawyer here at The Doan Law Firm, such lack of planning could be taken as evidence of negligence on the part of a theme park owner in case a drowning accident should happen.
In a drowning accident-related case, in March of this year we reported on the drowning death of a 7-year-old boy at Dinosaur Adventure Land, a religious dogma theme park in rural Monroe County, Alabama. In this tragic accident, the child was visiting the park with his family when he fell from a dock into 3 feet of water, striking his head on a rock in the process and drowning when his absence went unnoticed for several minutes. As we noted in our original post, at the time of the accident the park did not:
have a trained lifeguard on duty
have adult supervision of the area where the drowning occurred
have an emergency action plan in place should an accident occur.
We have since learned that the park’s director has attempted to place responsibility for the child’s death on his family because “… kids sometimes do dumb things…”!
Legally, any public recreational facility has the legal and moral duty to take every reasonable step to insure that an injury does not occur while a visitor of any age is present on its property. Should an accident occur and it can be shown that a facility did not take every reasonable precaution to prevent such an accident or did not have a plan in place to deal with an emergency, that facility can be held liable for damages.
If you have lost a family member to a drowning accident, we encourage you to contact the drowning and aquatic accident injury lawyer at The Doan Law Firm to arrange a free, no-obligation review of the facts in your case and a review of the legal measures that may be available to you.
When you contact our firm there is never a charge of any kind for us to review your case or for you to speak personally with our drowning accident lawyer. Should you later decide to file a lawsuit regarding your injuries, and that you would like for us to represent you in court, we are willing to assume full responsibility for all aspects of preparing your case for trial in exchange for a percentage of the final settlement we are prepared to win for you.
