Amusement Park Rides & Brain Injuries
Popular rides at amusement parks may pose more of a danger of serious personal injury than the public realizes. Many “high-thrill” rides impose force on the head and neck of the riders, and are more likely to cause injury when the ride travels backward. Despite the dangerous risks these rides pose, the amusement part industry has done a good job of keeping the injury data confused or under wraps. Berry Novack, a personal injury attorney, says “what they put in the record as ‘headache’ turned out to be head bleed and ‘neck pain’ turned out to be stroke.” Novack has filed 12 lawsuits against amusement parks in the past decade, ten of which involved brain injuries.
A hearing was held in Orlando, Florida on May 15th on a motion to force Walt Disney World Co. to disclose data on brain injuries resulting from its rides. The motion stemmed from a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 68-year-old man, Marvin Cohen, who suffered a stroke after riding the Tower of Terror at Disney MGM Studios in 1998. Novack claims that he has compiled reports of 65 cases involving head, neck and brain injuries on the Tower of Terror rides in California and Florida. Similar motions have been filed in another suit against Six Flag theme parks. That suit was filed on behalf of seven-year-old Michaela Maychrowitz, who suffered a brain hemorrhage after riding the Hammerhead Shark ride at a Six Flags park near San Francisco in 2005. The judge in California has ordered Six Flags to provide information on all brain bleed and stroke claims for all of their “high-thrill” rides across the country. Six Flags also operates the Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in Louisville, Kentucky and the King's Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio.
