Hi:
I'm a newbie to this forum, but this is an interesting story to me. I'm a former Disneyland (CA) ride-op, a lawyer, and presently a business owner in retail.
As a lawyer, there is a doctrine called comparative negligence, which would seem to be the ultimate question here. It seems likely that both the park and the guest were negligent. The guest, especially in light of his condition, should have reviewed the signs and safety information (assuming they were readily available/accessible to him). A reasonable guest in his condition, after reading the signs, should not have attempted to ride. At the same time, however, the park staff also should have been aware of the safety limitations (assuming that this was a known issue) and should have prevented the guest from riding.
The question for a jury is who is more negligent and by how much.
As a business owner and former DL cast-member, my opinion is that it is mostly on the park. First, parks are in the guest services business. That means the park and its entire culture is around understanding and serving the guest. And anyone who has worked in a park (and certainly the management) understands that, for the most part, guests check their brains at the door. At DL we called it the "sheep effect". We used to put a cast-member in front of attractions just to tell people, "there are 2 lines" because the guests see the one long line and just get in it like sheep.
Of course, checking your brain is pretty much the whole point of these parks. The guest is there to let go, in a fun, relaxed. and safe vacation environment. They are not thinking. It is the park's job to think. The park is there to take care of their guests in every way. And above all else, this means keeping the guests safe. The park is in a better position than the guests to know what is and what is not safe. They have the ability to train their staff on safety and enforce the safety rules.
Moreover, from a business standpoint, there is a fantastic economic incentive to avoid incidents like this. The cost of a highly trained, safety-aware staff is very small compared to the loss of business this kind of publicity causes, not to mention the legal costs associated with a death. $2.0 million goes a long way to safety training -- and I'll bet they are going to lose more than that on this nightmare.
Was the guest negligent as well? My opinion is yes. But I think that juries and most people agree that while everybody "should" read the signs, most people don't. And I also think that most people will agree that it is reasonable for a guest to at least ask if it is safe to ride. Certainly, in the case of a severely disabled amputee, if the ride ops were aware of his condition (and it appears that they were), then it seems pretty reasonable to assume if the ride ops let you ride then the ride is safe. After all, it is likely fairly easy to find evidence that the park trains the ops that is their primary job function -- above all other considerations -- to operate the ride safely. And most people know this.
So I do think the guest has some element of negligence. He should have read the signs. He should have obeyed them. He should have specifically asked a lead operator if the ride was safe for him. But I think that the guest's negligence pales in comparison to the park's. The ride operators primary function is to assure the safety of the guests. Period. The park should have drilled this into the ride ops' heads. The front of the park should have a manager on duty to meet with severely disabled guests and brief them on what they can and can't do safely (maybe they did, but haven't read that). The ride ops should be intimately aware of the safety limitations of the ride and should be trained to enforce those limitations without exception, 100% of the time. The park has every incentive to get safety right every day. Idiot guests? Not so much. We know this. So will any jury.
