Maryland, My Maryland

Balmer Sun, After child’s bounce house death, Southern Maryland Blue Crabs issued over $4K in citations, sued by parents. Not real crabs, a local minor league baseball team.

The company that owns the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs was issued over $4,000 in citations last month by labor regulators who alleged that the club’s employees failed to properly secure a bounce house last August when wind swept the inflatable away, killing a child and injuring another.

The citations issued Jan. 31 come alongside a negligence lawsuit filed by the family of the 5-year-old who died, Declan Hicks, against the Waldorf-based minor league baseball team and the manufacturer of the bounce house.

The Maryland Department of Labor released the preliminary citations last week in response to a public records request from The Baltimore Sun but had not released its full investigative file, which was also requested.

The citations from the Labor Department’s Safety Inspection Unit accuse the Blue Crabs’ owners, Crabs on Deck LLC, of:

• Failing to follow restrictions on wind speeds.
• Only anchoring the bounce house using four of its eight tether points.
• Failing to properly train staff who operated the bounce house.

Winds swept the bounce house 20 feet into the air during the bottom of the sixth inning as the Blue Crabs hosted the York Revolution on the evening of Aug. 2, and the children inside fell to the field as the amusement landed.

Hicks, of La Plata, dropped 20 to 30 feet onto the field, according to his family’s lawsuit. He was taken to Children’s Hospital, where he died. Another child was airlifted after suffering non-life-threatening injuries.
. . .
The amusement’s manufacturer, Inflatable Design Group, had included in its specifications that the bounce house should not be operated if the wind speed exceeds 15 mph, the citations say. The National Weather Service measured steady winds of 15 mph, with gusts in the low 20s, near Regency Furniture Stadium that evening.

The Hicks family’s lawsuit, which names the inflatable firm as a defendant, notes that the manufacturer’s instructions were “unclear”; they say to “take down the inflatable in winds up to 15 MPH” but don’t explain what that means or why it’s necessary.

The lawsuit says that wind-related dangers were “known for many years” by the inflatable amusement industry. The suit alleges that the bounce house was defective and “unreasonably dangerous,” not including technology that would have made the amusement safer.

The suit says that that Blue Crabs’ staff was ultimately responsible for safely operating the bounce house and that the company should have understood those risks, as the same bounce house, or a similar one, had been blown onto the field during a Charles County Youth League event “several years” prior to Hicks’ death.

I'm surprised there's not a criminal charge in there somewhere.