On December 4, a Cook County Court awarded $21.5 million to the family of a 6-year-old boy who drowned in a Bridgeview Park District pool and lost his life in 2014.
The victim was one of the kids who participated in the Justice Park summer camp program on June 17, 2014, and later taken to the Bridgeview pool. He was found to be unresponsive at the main pool in Commissioners Park and was declared dead at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
The lawsuit alleged that the group of children was improperly supervised by Justice Park District counselors. The attorney who represented the family in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against both park districts, told the boy failed the swimming test conducted a week before by the Justice Park District before going to the Bridgeview Pool. The attorney asserted the boy instead of being in the wading pool, was in the deep main pool without any flotation device and was found 10 feet away from the pool edge.
According to a video circulated during the trial, the counselors who were in charge of monitoring the group of children were seen inside the pool's locker room. Jurors at the Cook County Court held Justice Park District 80 percent liable for the incident and the Bridgeview district 20 percent at fault.
An $11 million settlement verdict was announced for the thirteen-year-old boy's family for the lawsuit filed against Murrieta, California-based school district, as the boy was left brain dead after he slipped and fell into the school's pool and failed to receive timely CPR from the lifeguards.
The lawsuit, filed in September 2016, claims the incident occurred at a party on June 3, 2016, when the boy slipped and remained submerged for nearly 2 minutes, after which his classmates brought him to the surface. His parents allege that the chief swim and dive coach for the school is liable for not controlling the nine amateur lifeguards on duty and blame him for not conducting CPR to save the boy. The coach clarified that he assumed the students' lifeguards managed to save the boy.
Attorneys representing the family claimed when paramedics arrived and tried to revive the boy, he was already brain dead. He remained unresponsive and comatose in the San Diego Hospital, and his family decided to take him off life support on July 7, 2016. A later investigation revealed that the pool party was understaffed, and the lifeguards present, lacked the proper safety knowledge for handling such high-stress situations.
Though an out-of-court settlement was reached last month, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Angel Bermudez will officially dismiss the case on September 6, 2018, after a settlement briefing in the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.
