Crazy Bouncy castle case

[TheDevilWearsPrimark]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7389775.stm

Perhaps we should all get contracts and disclaimers drawn up so that every time a child wishes to enter our homes, their parents have to sign away their rights to sue?

I really really feel that bouncy castles are for primary school children only - they are really dangerous with big kids on.

There's not always someone to blame for everything that goes wrong - some things are just accidents

Ooooh, you're just begging for me to look out one of my old essays...

One possible model is that operated in New Zealand via the Accident Compensation Corporation, but IIRC there are other models in some other countries.

I think this is reasonable. As a few others have said, if your child sustained a serious and debilitating brain injury, and you knew that someone could be held liable and their insurance covered them for a claim, wouldn't you claim?

Let's not forget the fact that the state (i.e. social services) have a responsibility to meet an injured persons care needs for the rest of their life, regardless of whether or not they receive compensation. In fact compensation funds are disregarded in charging for care service in England.

MaloryTowers bouncy castles may be for drunken 19 year olds or for children, but on the whole, no-one would suggest that they are designed for both to use them together.

Given that the boy, Sam Harris, was not actually at the party it seems likely the age group of the other children might have been different to his. And as his father was there as well. surely he was responsible for his own son and should have prevented him from using the bouncy castle with older children?

I do have sympathy for the injured boy's parents though, in their shoes I might have done the same. But hard cases make bad law - it seems like a genuine accident.

If you try to eliminate risk it will mean cutting out a lot of the pleasure of life.

It's not as though the bouncy castle was in their back garden and he broke in, though. They put up a bouncy castle (= kiddy magnet) on public playing fields, where kids... um... play, and didn't supervise it. And it's not as if they didn't know that it ought to be supervised, because the hire company had told them. That does sound negligent to me (plus wasn't it found on the balance of probabilites that the Perrys had actually invited Sam to use the castle? I'm a bit hazy on that aspect, though).

If you try to eliminate risk it wll mean cutting out a lot of the pleasure of life. If you try to sensibly manage risk it will just mean applying some common sense (e.g if you are specifically told that something needs to be supervised, then supervise it).