Speaking of potential lawsuits, the City of Winston-Salem has one on its hands with the drowning death of a teenager in a city pool.
The immediate question for the city is who should be doing the talking after such an incident:
A few hours after 16-year-old Christian Miller died at the Happy Hill Park pool, an unfamiliar face became the spokesman for the city of Winston-Salem – Tony Baker, the employee in charge of minimizing the city’s exposure to liability claims.
When someone is injured on city property, it is city policy for Baker or someone from the risk-management office to be on the scene. What was different Friday was that Baker initially took charge of releasing public information about the case.
Police later gave a brief account of events, but Baker would say only that the lifeguards acted “immediately and appropriately” in responding to an emergency and would not say whether Miller had drowned.
Other reports seem to contradict Baker’s account.
Whether lifeguards acted appropriately is now part of an investigation and could help determine whether the city was negligent in handling the incident – and how much the city might have to pay should Miller’s relatives file a liability claim.
Basically what happened was the lifeguard at the deep end of the pool where Miller drowned thought his friends were teasing when they said he was in trouble and didn’t check it out. The lifeguard watching the shallow end of the pool pulled Miller from the water, after which attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.
I’m not sure how much the city’s awkward “crisis control” will matter in the end because a payout seems inevitable, based on other drownings in city pools:
Baker’s involvement underscores the exposure to claims that cities face when there are drownings in public pools.
For example, the city of Greenville denied any liability in the death of a 9-year-old who drowned. But it paid $600,000 last year, nonetheless. The child apparently suffered from an irregular heartbeat, which may have led to a heart attack before the inhalation of water, according to the autopsy.
Other cases include a $550,000 settlement in 1995 between the city of Fayetteville and the mother of a 6-year-old boy who was found motionless at the bottom of a city pool. In 1999, the city of Durham agreed to pay $640,000 to the parents of a 9-year-old boy who drowned in a city pool.
In Winston-Salem, Jalen Lamont Yates, 6, drowned at the Polo Park pool in 2002. Jalen’s mother received $40,000 from the city and an undisclosed amount of money from the day-care center that was supposed to be watching Jalen during a trip to the pool.
