Terri Wang was riding The Villian at Six Flags Ohio, now Geauga Lake, when she was struck. The impact fractured her skull and nose. Doctors later had to remove skull fragments from Wang's brain.
The jury agreed that Six Flags, the owner of the park at the time, was negligent because park employees had been warned that guests were pciking up rocks from the ground under the coaster and throwing them at the trains. Park employees did not remove the rocks, however, choosing merely to cover them with mulch.
No one has determined exactly what hit Wang, however, as the object was not recovered. A 12-year-old girl was also struck in the head and injured, allegedly by throw rocks, two years later, in 2002.
Here's a local story on the incident from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
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Despite politically-charged rhetoric, juries in the United States tend to be very reasonable, and to demonstrate a highly sensitive B.S. meter for crazy arguments. Juries tend to be very lenient on defendants in situations where people got hurt in random, unforeseen ways. What riles juries is corporate arrogance -- managers who ignore *repeated* warnings about a dangerous problem, usually out of a belief that no one, either the government or a jury, will make them pay if something goes wrong. That's what got McDonald's nailed in the infamous spilled coffee case and that's what appears to have cost Six Flags here.
Also, I wonder if this is in some way an indictment to Six Flags for attracting hooligan crowds. That's been a major problem with them for years.
No, Six Flags need not ban rocks. It simply needs to put GRASS under its coasters, especially when the company has been warned that people are lobbing rocks from underneath a coaster up on to its tracks. That's just common sense. And when a business ignores common sense and that results in someone's injury, a jury is gonna make 'em pay. As it should.
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