In what may be the first wrongful-death case of its kind, the family of a Texas woman allege she died as a result of a bizarre accident at an indoor playground where she was watching children play in a “bounce house.”
The Wazoo's playground in Argyle, Texas -- “Where Fun is Inflated,” says its logo -- features no fewer than nine inflatable amusement devices. Parents sign a waiver releasing Wazoo's of any liability for injuries to children using the equipment.
According to a lawsuit filed last month, Doris Crawford, 84, went to Wazoo's on May 16, 2008 to watch her niece's children play. While the children were in one of the bounce houses, her daughters allege, she “was suddenly, and without warning, knocked to the ground.”
“Older children inside that particular 'bounce house' flung themselves against the mesh 'wall' and slammed into Ms. Crawford, who was standing on the outside watching her grandniece and grandnephew,” the suit says.
Crawford fractured her hip in the fall, “which ultimately caused her untimely death” the following day. Her niece, Donna Minke, told CBS News 11 in Dallas-Ft. Worth that she died of a heart attack two hours before she was scheduled to have surgery for the hip injury.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that 3,500 people, mostly young children, were treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries related to inflatable amusement devices including bounce houses in 2006.
Wazoo's waiver wouldn't apply to Crawford's accident. But the wrongful-death case raises an issue of first impression --- whether a playground operator can be held liable for an injury to a bounce house bystander.
Business owners are generally not liable for a potentially dangerous condition which should have been obvious to someone using the premises for recreational purposes. But they do have a duty to protect invitees from an “unreasonable risk of harm.”
Crawford's daughters argue that Wazoo's was negligent in failing to protect her from the risk of injury from children slamming against the walls of a bounce house and from older children playing in a bounce house designated for younger children.
“At the time of the occurrence, there were no Wazoo's Argyle employees, representatives or agents monitoring the children in the bounce house at issue or in that particular section of the recreational area,” the suit says.
Minke says she warned Crawford to stay away from the bounce house as she watched the kids, but two 12-year-old boys jumped so aggressively that the bounce house "knocked my aunt backwards. It projected her across the room."
Safety experts warn against allowing younger children to bounce with older children and recommend that bouncers should keep away from the netting, columns and walls of the bounce house. Wazoo's rules include “no climbing on inflatable walls.”
But in a somewhat similar case, the Texas Court of Appeals cleared an amusement park of liability for an attack on a woman by a goat in a petting zoo. “Under the facts of the case at bar ' ... nothing short of prophetic ken could have anticipated the happening of the combination of events which resulted in the injury of the person of the plaintiff,'” it said in Lewis v. Great Southwest Corp., 473 S.W.2d 228 (1971).
The most common forms of inflatable-ride injury are collisions between children and falling out of the bouncer. And it would be “nothing short of prophetic ken” to anticipate that Crawford would be knocked over while standing outside a bounce house.
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