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I would not expect it to be obvious to the parents because they are not experts and they wouldn't have been expecting to find any unsafe conditions just going out to eat. As for the staff, people are notoriously stupid about hazards they work with every day, but I'd bet doughnuts there's at least a couple of stories that go something like this:
Waitress: I was almost caught between the booth and the wall over there.
Manager: Good thing you're thin then (sexual harassment there), now table 12 needs .... (ignore problem).
The lawsuit might be something like this:
Safety Engineer Expert, who will have a CAD model and maybe even an animation: As you can see the rotation of the restaurant brings booths X, Y, and Z in and out of close proximity to the wall at these points, creating multiple changing pinch points and crushing zones. At this point the movement causes the space to close in from open and accessible to hazardous in T seconds. There were no guards in place.
Waitress: I was almost trapped once and told my boss. He ignored it.
And so forth.
If it was a known hazard as they assert they don't need to be engineering or architectural experts to also recognize "triangular wedge shaped crevice, toddler skipping ahead towards a small space that looks like it might not be safe for him to go crawling behind.
The made up scenarios of a waitress could have told her boss she almost got stuck and something about sexual harassment is just silly conjecture
Yes. And it seems property owners are on a teetertotter of being advised to post warning signs for caution - but not to state specifically what the hazard is, as that would make it clear they had knowledge of the danger beforehand.
So it's confusing.
I was in a hotel once where the shower/bathtub was raised more above the floor than it appeared. So when you stepped in you didn't notice as much as when you stepped out, the floor was further down than you expected it would be, creating a falling hazard. Especially considering the person's feet would be wet and slippery.
So the hotel placed a sign in the shower stall "Always exit a shower with caution".
Well played. I'm sure many guests fell and busted their cans getting out of there. But hey, didn't you see the sign?
This is like having a warning on a toaster about not using it while in the bathtub. There needs to be some personal responsibility or we will have warning signs on literally everything out there.
This is like having a warning on a toaster about not using it while in the bathtub. There needs to be some personal responsibility or we will have warning signs on literally everything out there.
We need that giant sign in the sky permanently "Don't look at sun".
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Quote:
Originally Posted by headingtoDenver
This is like having a warning on a toaster about not using it while in the bathtub. There needs to be some personal responsibility or we will have warning signs on literally everything out there.
Well, right. I bought a package of whole fresh cranberries yesterday and there is a label "does not contain peanuts". Um yes.
But on the other hand, there are warning signs like "Park at your own risk. Not responsible for damage caused by other cars in this parking lot". I know immediately I shouldn't park there, because there's a danger that's not immediately visible and my car is likely to get hit.
Actually, I've never seen a toaster with that warning, but rather, hair drying equipment. And we can all picture cases where someone would be using a hairdryer near someone taking a bath. And the dryer could fall in the bath.
Bolded is the key. The parents are going to have to prove that this was a known hazard and I have a feeling this will be tough. Also, how long has this restaurant been open? Have they had any other injuries during this time period?
This isn't an accurate statement of the law.
The restaurant is responsible if it ignore known safety hazards and safety hazards that it should have known about.
The fact that no other accidents happened during the tenure of this restaurant is certainly important. However, it is not the only relevant inquiry. It is relevant for people to simply assess the condition and determine on their own whether it presented a safety hazard. If five other people assessing the premises concluded there was a potential safety hazard and the restaurant did not, this would be an example of something they "should have known".
One can rip a stop sign down and weeks can go by without an accident. Suddenly on the 40th week two cars are in the wrong place at the wrong time and fatality occurs. Is the municipality responsible? It is if enough time went by that they should have known the stop sign was down and did nothing to fix it.
Stop and think about the implications of what you are saying. One could conclude that someone has to die or be seriously injured before any duty arises to fix a safety hazard. Such a notion is barbaric.
This pic says it all. It's an aerial view of the restaurant. In the left part of the photo, are those circular booths, like the one he got trapped behind. I'm not sure what compelled him to crawl back there, but it wasn't "to get a better view", which is what I was picturing before. I was picturing he was up against the glass looking down, as many patrons would be doing.
He's behind a couch against a wall, where there's a 5" gap. And then, as the circular booth rotates around the curved wall, it encounters a vertical brace every several feet or so, maybe an inch in width. That inch made a difference between 5" where he was able to fit himself into, to 4" that crushed him.
Sad, sad, but I can't imagine the restaurant could have possibly predicted a person could get back into that tiny little space. Or would want to.
Maybe I'm more detail minded about safety issues than the average person--perhaps a residue of my Air Force training--but seeing that there is a significant gap between two massive constantly moving surfaces, I'd have decided in a heartbeat that there needed to be some kind of fence or wall to prevent people or things from entering that gap.
I'd see that with absolute certainty, sooner or later, someone is going to put a hat or a purse or something on the back of the booth and it will fall into that gap.
With absolute certainty, sooner or later, someone is going to back up between the booths and a heel or foot is going to slip into the gap between the rotating floor and the stationary wall.
There is three or four feet of space between each booth where someone can eff up really badly. Without a doubt, that was going to happen, and any safety manager should have seen it.
How are people being so callous on this thread. A beautiful 5 year old died through no fault of his own and not even the fault of the parents (yet people keep insisting it was them). It was a known design flaw and a precious child died. Of course the parents should sue. Even if he was walking alone, if there is a design flaw in a building that kills a child, someone should have to pay.
That's a pretty bold assertion and I certainly missed where that was established. Can you refresh me on that? Links? References?
Maybe I'm more detail minded about safety issues than the average person--perhaps a residue of my Air Force training--but seeing that there is a significant gap between two massive constantly moving surfaces, I'd have decided in a heartbeat that there needed to be some kind of fence or wall to prevent people or things from entering that gap.
I'd see that with absolute certainty, sooner or later, someone is going to put a hat or a purse or something on the back of the booth and it will fall into that gap.
With absolute certainty, sooner or later, someone is going to back up between the booths and a heel or foot is going to slip into the gap between the rotating floor and the stationary wall.
There is three or four feet of space between each booth where someone can eff up really badly. Without a doubt, that was going to happen, and any safety manager should have seen it.
I haven't seen a rendering that lays out in detail the exact measurements and layout of the floor and booth/wall design at all point of movement and not sure if perhaps you may have.. I'm trying to find it online.
I don't know because it was reported to be a crevice of several inches and in 41 yrs nothing happened and not sure it's fair to think a reasonable conclusion would be that a human being would shimmy in there and die. And then the question follows if it WAS indeed a clear obvious hazard as the parents assert, why they didn't see it?
Actually, I've never seen a toaster with that warning, but rather, hair drying equipment. And we can all picture cases where someone would be using a hairdryer near someone taking a bath. And the dryer could fall in the bath.
And because we can all picture those cases is why there should not need to be any explicit warning. We will never be able to prevent people from doing stupid things and getting hurt. We can try, we've been trying for 50 years with endless signs and warnings and lawsuits, and still we have horrible accidents. You can barely find out how to operate a device in a product manual because most of it is useless and silly warnings.
The kid could have ran headfirst into the wall and broke his neck. Should we have signs on walls saying "wall is hard, ramming it with your head may cause spinal injuries"? Should all walls be padded? The kid could have ran into the street and got hit by a bus? Should there be signs warning not to run into the street in front of a bus? Should all roads have 4' barrier walls alongside them with childproof latch gates where pedestrians cross?
I highly doubt the owner or manager ever looked at that wall and thought "hmmm, a kid could squeeze into there and get crushed, oh well, dem's da breaks". I don't believe it was foreseen and ignored. Hindsight is 20-20 and it's easy to see after the fact.
I haven't seen a rendering that lays out in detail the exact measurements and layout of the floor and booth/wall design at all point of movement and not sure if perhaps you may have.. I'm trying to find it online.
I don't know because it was reported to be a crevice of several inches and in 41 yrs nothing happened and not sure it's fair to think a reasonable conclusion would be that a human being would shimmy in there and die. And then the question follows if it WAS indeed a clear obvious hazard as the parents assert, why they didn't see it?
As I said, it may be a matter of the peculiar thinking of Air Force safety: Looking at a situation and deliberately attempting to conceive of how many ways someone can screw it up.
That's usually an ultimately futile exercise because of Heinlein's Third Law: "It's impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are too ingenious."
However, we do try.
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