Free Republic

A federal judge has declined to throw out a lawsuit against the government filed by the family of an 11-year-old boy who was mauled to death by a black bear. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled against the government's claim that federal agencies had immunity from being sued for negligence in the case... a black bear pulled him from his tent and killed him.

The family of a Utah boy killed by a black bear can move forward with its lawsuit that contends the state didn't do enough to warn them to steer clear of the area where the bear had been seen earlier, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The court's ruling held that the state isn't immune from a lawsuit in the death of 11-year-old Samuel Ives, who was pulled from his tent and mauled by bear in American Fork Canyon on Father's Day in 2007. A state judge last year dismissed a negligence suit against the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources,...

The parents of the 11-year-old boy killed by a black bear last summer in American Fork Canyon are suing the U.S. Forest Service and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. They say more should have been done to prevent their son's death. Step-father Tim Mulvey, his wife Rebecca Ives and Sam’s father say they have lived with the horror of that father's day weekend every day since and now they want to make sure it never happens to anyone else's family. It is grief beyond comprehension for most of us; a child ripped away from his family in the middle of...

Bears that barge in on people in the forest have become enough of a nuisance that more of them should be hunted, state wildlife managers have decided. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, responding to a spike in human-bear contacts and an 11-year-old boy's death in June, want to issue 296 black bear hunting permits for Utah's 2008 spring and fall hunts, a 20 percent increase from the 248 permits offered this year. DWR officials say the state's black bear population is high enough to warrant the permit increase. Wildlife managers also say bears and humans clashed too many times...