Posted on 07/05/2007 6:07:37 AM PDT by JZelle
A 6-year-old Edina girl remained hospitalized in serious condition Wednesday after an unusual accident in which several feet of her intestine were pulled out by the suction of a swimming pool drain.
Abigail Taylor was injured Friday in the wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club in St. Louis Park and taken to Children's Hospital for surgery.
"It's a horrible, life-altering injury," said Robert Bennett, the attorney for Abigail's parents, Scott and Kathryn Taylor.
Bennett said doctors had to perform surgery to remove the part of Abigail's intestine that remained following the accident. He said it is likely that she will have to be fed intravenously for the rest of her life.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Call John Edwards. His first big win at trial was in a case with exactly the same circumstances.
I would have thought swimming pool operators would have corrected the conditions that lead to these type of injuries after the John Edwards lawsuit. Doesn’t seem seem ot be any reasonable excuse for this to have occurrerd twice. Poor baby.
My heart goes out to this child and her parents.
That poor little girl. Prayers for her and her family.
I heard about this type of accident a few years ago, but thought design changes in swimming pools addressed the problem. Can anyone elaborate?
As a matter of fact, a young girl here in North Carolina suffered a similar injury. Edwards was her lawyer and won a huge settlement for her family as the drain was defective.
Nah. Why should any precautionary measures be taken? Just thinning the herd, doncha know.
That’s the case of which I spoke in post #2.
The article made mention of some sort of safety lid or device that had come off of the drain.
Generically, these incidents are most often referred to as "Pool & Spa Entrapment" incidents.
http://www.lifesaving.com/issues/articles/17pool_spa_entrapment.html
One of the really scary things about my profession (Home Inspection) is the number and variety of defects in construction, design and maintenance that *can* infrequently cause serious injury to children - in most houses I can point out a dozen or more, but it's often hard to get people to take them seriously.
It's all about the poopy pools.
Parents let their little ones crap in the pool. With the cover on, the pool workers have to deal directly with the mess, with the safety cover off, the pool filter handles the job.
I mis-read your post. Oooops
The filter's pump should draw primarily, if not solely, from the skimmer. The pump can also suck a child to the bottom where he will drown.
This is pretty tragic. A child goes to the pool for a fun afternoon and is evicerated. This needs to be read the staff of every pool or water park so they know the cost of doing it wrong. So, criminal negligence or defective product? Or both? I suspect that the insurance company will settle this out of sight as quickly as possible. Not something you want to litigate in public in front of a jury.
Pump manufacturers need to develop some kind of shut off device for the circulating pump that shuts it down when an intake is blocked and flow is interrupted. Perhaps a pressure switch on the discharge side for when discharge pressure drops, AS WELL AS a breaker that shuts down the motor when it starts to draw more current or develop more load as it attempts to suck the blockage through the system (probably already does have this,) AS WELL AS some sort of low voltage switch located on the intake that physically senses any substantial blockage and cuts power to the pump. This is not a product to which you apply actuarial tables versus profit margin to see if there is an acceptable level of accidents.
Much easier than shutoff switches: multiple pump intakes.
http://www.vac-alert.com/
The most common "passive" precaution is to install two separate drains on the same line.
Even so, couldn’t they just do that during the breaks they make everyone take? Then put the damn cover back on when everyone gets back in the pool?
Several real estate agents have told me that in my neck of the woods (New England) an in-ground pool detracts from the value of a home.The potential for drowning (and subsequent legal liability) was given as the main reason.
Of course this may or may not be the case in other (warmer?) parts of the country.
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