Florida Slip and Fall Attorney Jim Dodson publishes a two part article reported by the Orlando Sentinel which reviewed hundreds of personal injury lawsuits against Florida theme parks. Among the Sentinel's lawsuit review's findings were: few of those who sued a theme park rushed into it, a small percentage of theme park cases went to trial, most settlements were secret, and plaintiff's who lost sometimes ended up footing the legal bill. Click here to ger your free books!

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Slip and Fall Cases Dominate Florida Theme Park Lawsuits | Part 2

The Sentinel's lawsuit review also found that:

Few of those who sue a theme park rush into it. Three-fourths of the plaintiffs claiming injuries since the start of 2004 waited more than a year before filing a lawsuit. Almost one in every five waited until just before the Florida statute of limitations expired - four years.

Carlos Diez-Arguelles, an Orlando lawyer who has handled at least 10 theme-park suits filed since 2004, said many people spend years trying to negotiate an injury claim short of suing. "Most of them just want their medical bills paid," he said. "They're from out of state, they come down here, and they get injured - their vacations are ruined."

Once sued, a theme park rarely backs down quickly. More than two-thirds of the cases filed against a theme park since the beginning of 2004 remained active in court for at least a year. Some cases from 2004 were still active at the start of 2009.
Most lawsuits are settled out of court. Of the 477 cases, 117 were still pending as of March 15. Of the 360 cases filed since the start of 2004 that have been resolved, only seven went to trial and reached a jury verdict - and the theme parks won all seven. Two-thirds of the rest were either settled officially or concluded with private agreements that stop short of using the word "settlement." Another 27 percent were dismissed by a judge with no indication of a deal.

Talcott said the tiny percentage of theme-park cases that went to trial is not unusual for personal-injury suits generally in Florida courts, but he was surprised the parks have won every single verdict in recent years. "They're obviously only trying the cases that they are pretty darn certain that they're going to win," Talcott surmised. "That's probably not a terribly bad strategy - a highly visible plaintiff's verdict might lead to more litigation."

Most settlements are secret. Of the 246 cases filed since 2004 that have already ended in some sort of agreement, only six reported dollar amounts: three with Universal, two with Disney and one with Busch Entertainment. Those deals ranged from a low of $4,300 - offered to the family of a boy injured on Doctor Doom's Fear Fall in Universal's Islands of Adventure - to a high of $145,000 - offered to the family of a toddler run over by a taxicab at a Disney hotel. "All the settlements they [the parks] want confidential, so it's hard even for attorneys who bring claims against theme parks to share information," Diez-Arguelles said.

Plaintiffs who lose sometimes end up footing the theme parks' legal bills. The theme-park companies can, and do, go after unsuccessful plaintiffs, seeking reimbursement for their legal expenses. Under Florida law, anyone who sues anyone else over a personal injury faces this possibility. If the defendant offers a settlement but the plaintiff rejects it and then loses the case (or, in some circumstances, even if the plaintiff wins the case), the defendant can demand the plaintiff pay the defendant's legal bills.

Case in point: Stuart McClain, 45, of Largo, who sued Walt Disney World in 2004, saying his back was injured at Epcot in 2001 when he stepped backward and stumbled off a temporary wheelchair ramp that did not have a handrail. He turned down Disney's offer of $250,000 - then lost a jury verdict last April, after which state Circuit Judge Thomas W. Turner ordered him to pay $129,681 of Disney's legal bills.

Disney argued that McClain's fall and injuries were caused by his own carelessness.

McClain, a former salesman and pastor, said he is fully disabled and in constant pain - and now broke and deep in debt. But he said he does not regret his decision. "I knew I was right," McClain said.

Theme parks also probably attract more frivolous cases than most businesses, according to William G. Childs, a professor at Western New England College School of Law who researches theme-park litigation.

Childs theorizes that, in seeking to create a "fantasy world" for their customers, theme parks generate high expectations for safety and comfort that, for some guests, rise far above what would be considered reasonable in the "real" world.

Last spring, for example, a man from Puerto Rico sued Disney because he had fainted from embarrassment when a ride attendant in the Magic Kingdom challenged him as he stood in a FastPass "shortcut" line at Space Mountain.

In separate cases, two women and a man have sued Universal in recent years to complain that, during the resort's annual Halloween Horror Nights festival, costumed characters startled them and caused them to fall down.

And a Brooksville man who sued in 2007 complained that he was injured at Busch Gardens when he pushed open a bathroom-stall door - which then bounced off a trash can, swung back and smacked him in the head.

"People assume they're going to a place where they aren't going to get hurt," Childs said. "And if they do get hurt, they think, 'By God, the theme park did something wrong.'"


Scott Powers
Reporter Orlando Sentinel Newspaper
March 30, 2009


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