Im not saying she should, but she can sue, and yes there are damages. She may not get much, but the zoo is liable. If you invite someone in for commerce, you have a higher standard to provide protection.
Anybody can sue. Doesn’t mean they should , or will.
Can one sue on mental anguish alone?
I have a niece who was amazingly strong, lightning fast and very agile as a toddler. She was also smart and always one step ahead of her parents. Those traits along with her impulsiveness made her a very challenging kid to keep safe. To make matters worse she was the oldest of three children under 5.
I seriously was concerned she wouldn’t live long enough to enter kindergarten.
So I can easily see this happening.
Not many lawyers would take this case just based on mental anguish. She has too much of a role in the whole thing (the defense would argue)- i.e. what is the proximate cause? It’s just not worth it. Perhaps the zoo will throw some money her way. My experience recently with two separate plaintiff cases (I am entirely a defense lawyer) which had a lot of merit but not high damages is that lawyers don’t want to spend the time and resources (getting expert witnesses etc- all who are paid initially by the law firm) on a case with low actual damages. If the boy had died or been seriously hurt- different story.
Agreed, I dont see anyone taking it on just mental anguish, but he also had a concussion. The zoo would probably quickly cut a nuisance check, just to make this go away, as they dont want their attendance numbers to decline.
I am guessing by the time people realized what was happening, it was too late. Look, the mom had an advance warning and not I grabbed the kid. How do you expect other people, who didn’t know what was going on, to grab the kid in time?
I’m not sure why you’re so fixated on this advance warning. I’m 22 and even I realize kids say ridiculous stuff all the time. One of my family’s favorite stories is when we went to an aquarium and saw one of those exhibits where you can pet a stingray. My brother, who was little at the time, was getting frustrated that the rays all kept swimming away from his touch. He ripped off his glasses and said “hold these, I’m going in.”
It was pretty hilarious at the time, but it was clearly coming from a place of “maaan I really want to go in.” He didn’t actually make any attempt to get into the water and we didn’t actually expect him to. I used to be a counselor and can think of countless times my three-year-olds said stuff like that. “I wanna go on the ferris wheel!” It’s easy to say in retrospect that she “had a warning” but I don’t think anyone would have considered that on the level of a notarized form, dated and stamped, announcing the kid’s schedule for the day as going into the gorilla exhibit.
I’m bothered by the assumption that this mother will sue. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t, but why do we need to assume the worst of people?
Because people are blaming everyone else, the fence or no fence, the zoo and the onlookers. Not saying the mom committed a huge crime. Yes, it can happen. It slips in her mind but she was in the best place to prevent the incident. A warning may be too strong a term but the kid didn’t just disappear without saying anything.
I think what people are forgetting is how quickly things happen with small kids, they can scoot and do something really quickly, and being small are easily lost sight of, and it only takes an instant. If the mom had other kids there, that makes it even more difficult, and to be honest most parents don’t think their kid is going to be the one who is going to do something stupid. Sure, some parents have their kids on leashes and such, some parents hold the kids hands and don’t let them leave, but IMO most parents don’t take it to that level necessarily, and certainly not all the time. It is very easy to judge and say “hey, you are at a zoo, why didn’t you restrain the kid”, but speaking only for myself, there are times when you can forget things like that, or assume it will be fine and not really think of all the possibilities, it happens.
That just got me to thinking, many of us on here are now middle age or well into middle age (or perpetually 29, like me:) and for those judging the mom, think about the way we were raised. Back then, parents who smoked used to routinely smoke in cars with the kids in there, back then you had station wagons with the infamous jump seats in the far back, that if they had seatbelts weren’t used. Likewise, though seatbelts were mandated by law since 1963 in all new cars, seatbelt use, even for kids, was spotty, I seem to recall even for kids seatbelt usage was not high (they didn’t pass the mandatory seatbelt use laws until much later, I believe it was late 70’s or 80’s, might have been a federal mandate with penalties for non compliance…).
When most of us had kids, we probably made a big effort to ‘child proof’ the house, with outlet covers and cabinet locks and such, when we were young that wasn’t all that common. I am not saying that to make the claim that being uber cautious with young kids is wrong or overbearing, what I am saying is that our parents weren’t perfect, to us it seems perfectly clear not to smoke in the car with kids, to have them wear seatbelts, to have cabinets latched, you name it, the same way that those who for example suggest that the mother should have had the boy on a leash, while it kind of makes sense, is leaving out that even in this crazy world today, relatively few parents (including my wife and I) tether kids like that…
In terms of the need to shoot the gorilla, one of the things you have to keep in mind is that a gorilla, even in a zoo, is still a wild animal, and you can’t entirely predict what it will do. When animals get scared, when they get frightened, when something startles them, it can override what otherwise might be the instinct to protect a young animal that many animals have…put it this way, look at what human beings are capable of doing to children, the cruelty and abuse they can do, and we are supposed to be intelligent and above all that, how many human adults when frightened or scared or angry can lash out at a child and hurt them, when they otherwise were loving people? A Gorilla is an intelligent, beautiful creature, but it still is closer to the wild than humans are, so to say the Gorilla wasn’t a threat is to assume you can predict their behavior, and you can’t.
This zoo and all zoos need to tighten up access and post warnings as to the definition of “open exhibits”, endeavor to protect people from themselves. The mom apparently had no clue to or thought about how the set up really was because it would have alarmed her when the child said he was going in if she had realized he actually could! She didn’t realize how easy the barriers were to breach and maybe the boy had never, ever been impulsive before so she had no reason to think he would go for it.
Sorry for being the meanest person in the entire universe. If the mom had no clue that the kid could breach the wide open railing and a few bushes between her kid and the gorillas, she should not be working at a preschool. Why does it always have to be someone else’s fault? I love open exhibitions. I hope we can keep it as is. The zoo setup is sophisticated keeping captive animals as free as possible. To enjoy advanced features, people in it should advance themselves. One way to do that may be imposing some penalty to make it clear what is expected, a simple citation to lay the responsibility where it belongs.
Iglooo- She’s an administrator at a preschool and not an expert on breaching zoo enclosures. She’s a parent just like most of the rest of us and “things” happen that you can’t foresee. I don’t care if the kid announced that he was going in. That’s irrelevant in my opinion. A pronouncement by a 3 year old high above a gorilla enclosure…
Interesting to see so much speculation (which is really all we have right now) leading to such strong opinions one way or the other.
I didn’t realize there are Zoo’s in the US that have open exhibits that kids could easily breach. I will admit to a false sense of security when visiting the Zoo with children. I just assumed little kids were taken into consideration in design. We would often visit the very empty Zoo in the winter and let the older kids run ahead. Guess its yet another time I dodged an unknown bullet…
Legally I have to have a 4 foot fence around my backyard pool that a kid can’t climb with gates that automatically lock when opened. Seems like common sense that the same rules would apply to a Zoo with animals that eat children.
Kids can and do wreak havoc often, in spite of parental supervision. They are quick little suckers.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/01/china/lego-statue-demolished-trnd/
What happens if I run over someone causing minor injuries? It was a simple mistake. Am I not responsible for it because it could happen to anyone? Don’t I get some kind of citation? If I do, I’d fine with that.
The Lego incident was an accident waiting to happen. A Lego exhibit is going to attract a great number of children and some are going to want to touch the creations - that’s what you do with Lego’s right?
I remember in Kindergarten when my S’s school exhibited what the children had created at home with Lego’s - some creations were very elaborate- they sent home a note to the parents suggesting that we spray glue them if we didn’t want them coming home disassembled. Most parents did so.
The boy went under a rail, through wires and over a moat wall to get into the enclosure, according to the zoo.
This is not an open exhibit. There is the railing, the bushes, a wire barricade, and perhaps another wall.
Thanks for the clarification. Have not followed the thread and only saw the horrible video.