Swimmin’ Hole owner loses liability insurance, hopes to reopen next year

In Fridays Joplin Globe there was an article that caught my attention “Swimmin Hole owner loses liability insurance, hopes to reopen next year”.


The story is about a local water park that was forced to obtain liability insurance for the park due to a new state law requiring one million dollars in liability coverage for water parks in the state of Missouri. The new law called “Ethan's Law” came from the accidental drowning of a six year old boy at the Swimmin Hole.

As the story title states the Swimmin Hole owner has lost his insurance coverage do to what he calls “two small accidents”. Now I am biased about this story due to my knowledge of some things. So with that said this story caught my attention not because of what the writer put down but how readers responded in the comments. It seems to me that some of the comments left by a few readers of the Joplin Globe are a little out of touch.

Accidents happen writes:

“If I was the Burt's, I wouldn't allow Lauren Cory or her family anywhere near that waterpark! Heaven forbid one of them might fall and injure something and have cause for a whole new lawsuit. It's a shame she pushed and got an emotional law passed about having a million dollars worth of insurance. Obviously they need insurance, but to put that high of a dollar amount is unreasonable. It's like putting a dollar amount on a family members life if some accident should happen. Accidents are just that, something unintended to happen. We are in such a sue happy world which enables ambulance chasers to earn big bucks representing people in lawsuits. I still have to wonder why some of this didn't begin at home before the child left on the outing. Knowing he was going to a swimming park, why didn't the parents provide a life jacket he could have worn? The ball was dropped by a lot of people that day. The parents, the boys and girls club for lack of enough supervision and lastly the water park needing more personnel. That's what made this an ACCIDENT.”

From my understanding of this “emotional” law it affects the safety of children and adults by the old saying stuff rolls down hill. To obtain one million dollars in coverage the insurer is going to require that the water parks implement safety standards and adhere to them. If the parks do not and continue to have accidents they will be dropped. This helps to insure parks are ran and built safely. I don’t know about you but if it was my million bucks I would make sure it was safe.