Cedar Point settles lawsuit with injured woman, Tony Clark declined comment

Cedar Point settles lawsuit with Michigan woman injured in Top Thrill Dragster incident

Thoughts?

My thought is that there is nothing to think about. The lady has suffered and continues to suffer life sustaining injuries. A settlement was bound to happen.

TwistedWicker77, I will respectfully disagree with you. Yes she suffered a traumatic injury that has and will impact her quality of life.

However in the investigation, that state of Ohio stated that Cedar Point did nothing wrong, and the investigators found no issues with the ride. Therefore given that information, I am surprised that the judge didn’t dismiss the case.

Now if Cedar Point was found to be in question, then I would have a different opinion.

Now just so that we’re clear, I’m not saying what happened isn’t terrible, and I do feel bad for her & her family. However in my complete honest opinion, it was fluke accident and she was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I am obviously not a lawyer, but I think that the park can still be considered liable to some extent despite whether or not they did anything "wrong".

And irrespective of that distinction, a settlement is in the best interest of CF.

Right, I believe the report stated they weren't "criminally liable" if I recall correctly. That has a much higher burden of proof than being civilly liable. Regardless, as Brandon stated, it's in their best interest to settle as it would be a tough look publicly otherwise.

Essentially the State said that Cedar Point did not violate any law on the books and followed established maintenance procedures set forth by the manufacturer, state and their own procedures. While that sounds great the fact remains that a piece of a ride failed and struck someone who was doing nothing wrong, not standing in a restricted area, not breaking any rules etc...

I work at a large industrial facility and anytime anything is changed from its original design an Management of Change (MOC) must be conducted to discuss what the possible consequences of that change could be and how any new risks will be mitigated. I do not know if anything like that is in place for the Amusement Park Industry but if not it certainly should be.

We can call this situation a freak accident or whatever we want but the bottom line is that it should have never happened. I still view this as a part of a ride malfunctioned and severely injured someone who was following all park rules at the time thus Cedar Point is liable for the incident.

You don't have to break the law in order to be held liable for injuring someone. For example: using improper fasteners on a roller coaster car is not against the law according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, but it sure did cause quite a problem!

My thought is that there was already another thread for this.

https://forums.pointbuzz.com/Forums/Topic/cedar-point-reaches-agreement-with-woman-injured-by-top-thrill-dragster

Yeah, and "Tony Clark declined" is pretty silly. I'm pretty sure everyone understands how settlements typically work. They're settled and no one says anything after that.