My 14-year old snuck into the theme park without paying the admission and, in going on a whirling ride with its twists and turns, suffered a whiplash. Does the fact that he did not pay for admission restrict his damage award?
The theme park owes a duty to its patrons to provide a safe experience. Your son, however, was arguably not a patron of the park since he snuck in without paying admission. Your best angle in this particular case will be if you can show that it was particularly easy to sneak into the park and that quite a few of the “patrons” on any given day have not, in fact, paid for their admission due to this. Your attorney may suggest hiring an investigator to check this avenue out. You would also want to argue that since the park didn’t know that your son had not paid for his admission, the park still owed him a duty of care to make sure that any ride that he went on was safe.
A further argument can be made that the ride was so unreasonably dangerous that liability actually rests with the ride’s manufacturer. This will require examination and eventual testimony by expert witnesses – engineers, for example – who can examine the ride in question and determine whether it was engineered or manufactured so that it was unreasonably dangerous. Even if your son didn’t pay for his ticket into the park, an unreasonably dangerous product still creates liability for whoever designed or manufactured it.
You need to talk to an experienced attorney soon to determine how your case should be handled. Although your son’s actions in sneaking into the park may have some affect on the amount of his damages, it is unlikely that his case will be worthless.
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