News OK, for the Oklahoman, has reported that the mother of a child that lost her life on playground equipment in her elementary school, has filed a lawsuit naming the manufacturer, the company that sold the equipment to the school, and the school itself.
A.A., aged 9 at the time of her death, had been playing on a teeter-totter type of playground apparatus, when she fell off mid-air, stood up to get back on and was hit in the head by a piece of equipment that was on it's way down.
A.A. suffered with a full cardiac arrest and died the same day, August 19, 2010, at the Integris Baptist Regional Health Center.
The suit was filed on October 27 in the Ottawa County District court. One of the mother's attorneys, Mark Ramsey, in speaking for his client said, "This is a very sad situation, a 9-year-old ought to be able to go to school and not get killed."
Named in the suit is the company that manufactured the playground equipment, Xccent Inc.; the company that sold the equipment to the elementary school, Noah's Parks and Playgrounds; and the school district that owned it.
In the autopsy report it was learned that A.A. most likely died due to a severe concussion - the teeter-totter, known as the X-wave, weighed over 400 pounds and was made up of three steel sections meant to bear the weight of 20 children.
A.A., per her friends and family, was not known to have any medical problems prior to her death.
The Xccent website currently lists the X-wave as a giveaway item if another piece of their playground equipment is purchased at a cost of $20,000.
M.S., the quality control manager for Xccent, did not return calls from reporters for comments.
The complaint alleges that the X-wave is a defectively designed piece of playground equipment as it continues to move even when a child falls to the ground or underneath its heavy moving parts. As elementary school children of different ages have different heights and weights, the equipment fails to move in a predictable course for each one.
Along with the teeter-totter itself, the suit claims that Noah's Parks and Playgrounds is responsible for its failure to warn users to practice precautionary measures.
And finally, the school district is named in the suit as it failed to install the minimum thickness of mulch - or other material - to provide a cushion between a child and the ground around the X-Wave.
Both Noah's Parks and Playground's president and the Wyandotte Superintendent refused to comment on the impending lawsuit as they have yet to be served with the legal papers.
The superintendent would only say, "The X-Wave has been taken down and disassembled and secured in a locked storage building."
Six other Oklahoma school districts have since removed the X-wave, or barred students from using it, since A.A.'s death.
If you have lost a loved one due to a piece of faulty equipment, or by the failure of another party to protect them, you have the grounds for a lawsuit. Contact a personal injury lawyer to discuss what has occurred, and how best to move forward.