Injured in a Stampede by a Crowd

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Occasionally, you hear in the news about a person injured in a stampede at a festival, parade, sporting event, theme park, or shopping sale.

Anytime there is a crowd of people, there is a potential for someone to be hurt by the crowd’s actions, such as being knocked down and crushed or suffocated during a stampede or even being lifted up and propelled in the air by crowd-goers.

When festivals, concerts, and other events that draw crowds are put on, the event organizer typically employs crowd control plans developed ahead of time to ensure everyone has a safe experience.

Crowd control involves much more than just having a security team on the ground watching for disorderly or violent conduct. It includes things like erecting barriers to keep people out of certain areas, having enough emergency exits, and proactively monitoring crowd dynamics and movement to ensure the density of people in one space does not get to such high levels that it becomes dangerous.

When a person is injured by a crowd surge or stampede, the event organizer can be held liable for failing to adequately control the crowd or failing to have appropriate safety measures in place to ensure the safety of all attendees.

Let’s suppose a woman takes her child to an amusement park on a summer weekend when the park is having a deeply discounted day.

There are special booths set up with all kinds of prizes. Many people are crowding into the park for the day and flocking to a particular section of the park where word got out that workers are giving away freebies that everyone seems to want.  Suddenly, the woman finds herself separated from her child in the mass of people.

She stops and looks around her to see where the child might be, but in stopping to look, she’s knocked to the ground by the excited people behind her who are anxiously trying to get to the freebies.

Once on the ground, she suffers severe injuries from the crowd surging over her.

Suppose still, that the child looks around and sees this all happening to his mother.

In this situation, the amusement park can likely be held liable for the woman’s injuries and the child’s emotional distress caused by witnessing this happen to his mother.

As part of a case investigation, the woman and child’s lawyer might learn that the park did not train its employees in crowd management.

Or perhaps the park did not have enough of its trained workers actually on duty watching over the crowd of people.

There are numerous negligent actions or inactions on the part of the park that an attorney may uncover in working on such a case.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”