If it is such a danger and the danger is so well known, why do adults keep using the slide time after time? They have not removed electronic bulls from bars yet either. I suspect someone was finally related to an attorney.
I didn't know the slide was a danger when I went down it that one time. However the owners have been informed time and again, and did not make any changes nor did they inform parents about this. You know you may be tossed from a bull and be injured. You know the set of risks. You don't expect to go down a slide and end up with a back injury and then to find out it's not a rare freak accident, but rather a fairly common occurrence. This isn't included in the expected risks.
If you know people are being hurt on property you own, especially the main attraction for visitors, and you don't at least inform people that there's more than the expected risk, you're negligent.
Let's compare it to a hair dryer. It's common knowledge that if you use one while in a bathtub, you're probably going to fry yourself to death. But if the maker knows that holding the handle in one hand and the cord in the other has been resulting in a short that's been hurting people and says nothing about it, or even prints a tiny little warning on the bottom of that label about not using it in the bath while napping, the maker is responsible. This isn't a case of stupid people needing warnings on jars of peanut butter that the jar contains peanuts.
What you expect with a slide is that you may get a friction burn, not that you may get a back injury. The important piece here is that back injuries from going airborne is a common occurrence at this facility, and the owners are neither making changes to lessen the change nor informing people. We walk in expecting the typical risks of a slide, and accept that the rare freak accident may happen, only to find out after it's too late that back injuries are common. There are still people out there, commenting on articles about the lawsuit, who are fine with this, and will continue going down the slide, but they are choosing to do so with this information that people like me didn't have. I personally would not have gone down the slide. I was that kid who wouldn't go down slip-and-slides either. If others want to, and know the real risks involved, fine. I was not made aware of the real risks. Until this lawsuit, many people didn't know that these injuries are business as usual for this place.
Some commenters are saying that parents whose kids have been injured are to blame for not directly monitoring them. This facility bills itself as a place to let your kids run around while you sit and chat with other parents in the cafe. The employees monitoring kids are not only letting, and even helping, people go down the slide wrong, but have done so poor of a job of monitoring kids that several children were molested there in November by one man. Is the answer to start telling parents to go with their kids (thus killing the main attraction of getting a break while the kids burn off energy), or to bar adults (thus killing any chance to watch your kid)?
This place has problems, and the owners are looking the other way.
