jcb
always emerging from hibernation
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- Apr 28, 2007
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Today's podcast discussed a recently filed lawsuit by a parent on behalf of a minor child (a girl) who fell on the steps of the theater on the third deck of the Fantasy.
There were some questions about the allegations which I'll try to address (based solely, I should add, on my read of the complaint the parent filed, well had a lawyer file (but we lawyers talk as if the parties actually file lawsuits)).
Most if not all states think that minors are not capable of bringing or settling a legal action. In this case, the minor is not named, only the parent whose last name is Lynch. The lawsuit is filed in federal district court in Orlando. Most trip and fall cases are filed in state court but here, the parent invokes the federal court's maritime jurisdiction. Now I know beans about the details of maritime jurisdiction so I'll just link to the wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_law
As to what happened, the complaint simply says, the child was on the Fantasy cruise which left Port Canaveral. In August 2015, she was in the theater on deck 3 when: "As the Plaintiff's child descended the Defendant's stairs, the Plaintiff's child caught her shoe on a raised portion of the stair, which caused her to fall violently." Now, accidents happen. The law recognizes this. You can't recover simply because you fall. There has to be some reason to blame the ship or its owner. So, the complaint alleges that there was a "dangerous condition" or a "hazard and risk of injury not reasonably known to its passengers" that DCL knew of these dangers but didn't warn the passengers. This is most likely guess work on the part of the parent's counsel.
As for the allegation that the child is "disabled" I would not get too worked up over it. The complaint says the child "suffered physical and mental pain and anguish, disability, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life, and medical expenses." This is what we call "boilerplate" language and is probably a phrase the lawyer uses in all of his complaints of this nature. To be honest, if the fall had caused a really serious condition that rose to the level of being an actual disability (as in one covered by the ADA), I would have expected to see a more specific allegation.
Please don't take me as being unsympathetic to children who get injured on cruise ships. I know nothing about this case but I thought I'd try to explain a little more about the allegations in the complaint. It is simply a trip and fall case. On the whole, these kind of lawsuits usually get very little publicity, even when filed against Disney, but here it is apparently newsworthy since a child was injured.
To be honest, I'm a lot more interested in a decision which told a man who lives in Pennsylvania that if he wanted to sue Disney because he was allegedly "attacked by a venomous snake at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida" he couldn't sue in Pennsylvania because the Disney subsidiary that operates WDW (and DL) does not do business in Pennsylvania. This is simply one of many (but not all) decisions which has held that if you want to sue WDW for something that happened in Florida, you are going to have to sue in Florida.
There were some questions about the allegations which I'll try to address (based solely, I should add, on my read of the complaint the parent filed, well had a lawyer file (but we lawyers talk as if the parties actually file lawsuits)).
Most if not all states think that minors are not capable of bringing or settling a legal action. In this case, the minor is not named, only the parent whose last name is Lynch. The lawsuit is filed in federal district court in Orlando. Most trip and fall cases are filed in state court but here, the parent invokes the federal court's maritime jurisdiction. Now I know beans about the details of maritime jurisdiction so I'll just link to the wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_law
As to what happened, the complaint simply says, the child was on the Fantasy cruise which left Port Canaveral. In August 2015, she was in the theater on deck 3 when: "As the Plaintiff's child descended the Defendant's stairs, the Plaintiff's child caught her shoe on a raised portion of the stair, which caused her to fall violently." Now, accidents happen. The law recognizes this. You can't recover simply because you fall. There has to be some reason to blame the ship or its owner. So, the complaint alleges that there was a "dangerous condition" or a "hazard and risk of injury not reasonably known to its passengers" that DCL knew of these dangers but didn't warn the passengers. This is most likely guess work on the part of the parent's counsel.
As for the allegation that the child is "disabled" I would not get too worked up over it. The complaint says the child "suffered physical and mental pain and anguish, disability, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life, and medical expenses." This is what we call "boilerplate" language and is probably a phrase the lawyer uses in all of his complaints of this nature. To be honest, if the fall had caused a really serious condition that rose to the level of being an actual disability (as in one covered by the ADA), I would have expected to see a more specific allegation.
Please don't take me as being unsympathetic to children who get injured on cruise ships. I know nothing about this case but I thought I'd try to explain a little more about the allegations in the complaint. It is simply a trip and fall case. On the whole, these kind of lawsuits usually get very little publicity, even when filed against Disney, but here it is apparently newsworthy since a child was injured.
To be honest, I'm a lot more interested in a decision which told a man who lives in Pennsylvania that if he wanted to sue Disney because he was allegedly "attacked by a venomous snake at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida" he couldn't sue in Pennsylvania because the Disney subsidiary that operates WDW (and DL) does not do business in Pennsylvania. This is simply one of many (but not all) decisions which has held that if you want to sue WDW for something that happened in Florida, you are going to have to sue in Florida.
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