This is horrifying. Supposed to be a press conference soon with more details. Rumors seem to indicate it happened on the Verrukt, the world's tallest waterslide.
Originally Posted by GloucesterChief:
Yep. What people don't understand is that corporate personhood was in place so you could sue a corporation in whole instead of individuals because the latter is a whole lot harder than the former.
You can sue them, but you can’t prosecute them. It boils down to scope of position. A corporation can be held liable if an employee breaks policy or is insufficiently trained. An employee that breaks a company policy can still endanger the company. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
Not to bring politics into this but I have a question.....Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people in the Citizens United case and can give as much as they want to PAC's.
My question for you lawyer types.... Since the SCOTUS ruled corporations are people in the Citizens United case, has anyone tried to sue them as people? Prosecutors try to charge them as people?
I don’t believe you can prosecute a company (I’ll never say can or can’t in regards to laws). You can’t send a company to jail. You can sue the company and prosecute the offending individuals within the company. [Reply]
On the local news last night- they interviewed a woman that was seriously injured long before the kid's death. She practically broke her back on that slide.
Fact is they knew there were major design flaws and covered it up.
They knew someone would most likely get hurt or killed and covered it up.
Several people did, in fact, were seriously hurt and they covered it up.
A kid was killed and they tried to cover it up.
I think the managers, politicians and owners that knew it was unsafe deserves jail time- and the park should be fine the largest penalty that law can levy. Their actions were criminal and they should be punished for it. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Halfcan:
On the local news last night- they interviewed a woman that was seriously injured long before the kid's death. She practically broke her back on that slide.
Fact is they knew there were major design flaws and covered it up.
They knew someone would most likely get hurt or killed and covered it up.
Several people did, in fact, were seriously hurt and they covered it up.
A kid was killed and they tried to cover it up.
I think the managers, politicians and owners that knew it was unsafe deserves jail time- and the park should be fine the largest penalty that law can levy. Their actions were criminal and they should be punished for it.
What baffles me is that these people had the hubris to assume that this was somehow going to all work out? Several people had been seriously injured in the half a year (yes, that's it) that it had been opened. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Chiefspants:
What baffles me is that these people had the hubris to assume that this was somehow going to all work out? Several people had been seriously injured in the half a year (yes, that's it) that it had been opened.
It was most likely just a numbers game with no regard to the safety of their patrons.
Construction Cost + Bribes to Inspectors and Politicians + Advertising for the Worlds Largest / Fastest slide = $ Huge Profits - Payoffs for injuries - legal fees to squash lawsuits = Net Profit $$
They saw that despite the safety risks- and rafts floating off the hill to the concrete below- it would be a huge draw and money maker- and they chose this business plan at all cost.
Then a little boy loses his life on the shoddy netting used as a band-aid to fix the major design flaws they previously knew about- now they are exposed for the dirty, lying money grubbing pieces of shit they are. :-) [Reply]
There are state people (politicians, departments, inspectors) whose heads need to roll (pun not really intended) over this as well. People were inspecting this thing and signing off on it, knowing full well the risk. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Frazod:
Seriously, when you go to a public amusement park, one should have a reasonable expectation that professionals design the rides.
Originally Posted by Halfcan:
It was most likely just a numbers game with no regard to the safety of their patrons.
Construction Cost + Bribes to Inspectors and Politicians + Advertising for the Worlds Largest / Fastest slide = $ Huge Profits - Payoffs for injuries - legal fees to squash lawsuits = Net Profit $$
They saw that despite the safety risks- and rafts floating off the hill to the concrete below- it would be a huge draw and money maker- and they chose this business plan at all cost.
Then a little boy loses his life on the shoddy netting used as a band-aid to fix the major design flaws they previously knew about- now they are exposed for the dirty, lying money grubbing pieces of shit they are. :-)
I don't know Schlitterbahn's policies but I do know from experience working for another theme park that any injury on a ride there shutdown the ride for a full inspection even if it was obvious the injury was due to the rider's actions. I remember when someone jumped off the top of the log flume and broke both their legs that the ride was down for a full two days while it was inspected top to bottom to make sure there was no way the ride malfunctioned causing the person to jump. [Reply]
Reminds me of the Alpine Slide I rode in Stowe, Vt. back in the 80's. The kid at the top of the slide taking tickets had and arm and ankle in casts. He'd wiped out on it the week before.:-)
You could damn sure get moving on it and crash if you weren't careful. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Strongside:
I'm kind of torn on this.
This guy didn't wake up in the morning thinking to himself, "I think I'll kill a kid on the water slide today."
But the negligence seems to be there.
But then again, put yourself in this guy's shoes for a second. You're a young guy, trying to make a career for yourself, and you've done pretty ****ing good thus far – by all accounts. You're the D.O. for a HUGE waterpark and a multi billion dollar company. These guys see something in you, and they trust you. They've also just made a historic investment by building one of the world's largest water slides. THE largest, actually. And now they're expecting you to keep the ride, and the park, busy. You've gotta help the stakeholders pay for that ride, y'know? That's a lot of pressure for a 20-something year-old guy. You can either shut the ride down because people are getting hurt, or you can keep things rolling along as the brass would want.
I don't know what I would do in this situation, honestly.
Seems to me this kid's become the fall-guy for someone else's faulty design – and I don't feel like that's right.
WTF? You should really step back and evaluate your ethics. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
Things like accident reports don't necessarily worry me, as well as many of the other claims. My guess is that a merry go round has accident reports attached to it. But the fact that there were no engineers involved in designing the thing? How does that even happen? I truly don't understand how a company could build something like that with no engineering testing. Is there a loophole in the regulations that allowed it?
If it was poorly designed how did it get approval from the local building authorities? How did it pass inspections during the construction? Seems like there is culpability enough to go around. [Reply]
