HUNT, TX (Law.com) — Legal experts say Texas law prevents parents from waiving their children’s injury claims, so liability waivers at Kerr County camps and businesses likely will not shield them from lawsuits over deaths in the Texas Hill Country flooding.
The legal principle, established in multiple Texas Court of Appeals cases, could leave businesses facing significant liability, even if customers signed standard waivers before participating in activities or staying at facilities in the flood zone, said Rogge Dunn, a Dallas attorney with Rogge Dunn Group, PC, who specializes in liability waivers.
“Parents cannot release their kids’ claims,” Dunn said. “So in this case, if the children were killed or injured, they can sue, and even if their parents signed a release, it’s no good.”
Lawsuits are anticipated as attorneys forecast an increase in litigation targeting businesses located in flood-prone areas along the Guadalupe River. This follows the Fourth of July early morning flash flood, which resulted in more than 100 deaths so far in Kerr County, including 27 at Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp.
The Guadalupe River rose to 37.5 feet in a few hours in a flash flood that hit the 100-year-old Camp Mystic in Hunt, after 2 a.m., sweeping 27 campers and counselors into the river. Their bodies were later recovered. The camp’s owner, Dick Eastland, also died in the flood when his truck was swept into the river as he tried to evacuate girls from the cabins, according to media reports. Kerr County officials on Tuesday reported there have been 107 confirmed deaths, including 70 adults and 37 children, and more than 100 people are still missing. The debris removal and recovery operations continue.
Texas courts have consistently ruled that parents lack the legal authority to waive their minor children’s right to sue for injuries, a protection that remains in place regardless of waiver language, according to legal precedent in cases including Munoz v. II Jaz Inc. and Pablo Paz et. al. v. Lifetime Fitness, Dunn said.
The potential for gross negligence claims could further complicate defenses for businesses that expanded operations into known flood zones, as Texas law generally prohibits companies from disclaiming liability for gross negligence even with properly written waivers.
“It looks like gross negligence to put minor children right next to the river in a flood zone,” said Sean Timmons, managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC in Houston. “They put it on a floodplain, and they knew it was a floodplain. That’s why the land was cheap.”
Legal experts predict that camps lack sufficient insurance coverage to handle the scale of potential claims from the flood deaths.
“I can guarantee they don’t have enough insurance,” Timmons said, referring to the camps involved in the flooding incident.
An absence of adequate emergency notification systems likely contributed to the tragedy, Timmons said.
“The fact that they had nothing and everybody was asleep, it was quite catastrophically sad,” Timmons said about the lack of adequate warning systems.
Timmons expects numerous attorneys to pursue cases, similar to patterns seen after other disasters. Gross negligence is a central legal theory, particularly in the context of placing vulnerable children near flood-prone areas, he said.
“The lack of an evacuation plan upon knowledge of weather is gross negligence,” he said.
The litigation will likely focus on whether Camp Mystic’s decision-making constituted gross negligence rather than ordinary negligence’ said Hunter Shkolnik, partner at Napoli Shkolnik in Austin. With over 132 deaths in Kerr, Travis, and Williamson Counties related to the flooding, expect legislative hearings and regulatory overhaul, regardless of the civil outcomes, he said.
