According to Kimberly Halpern’s lawsuit, her family was visiting a Staten Island branch of the kid’s pizza-and-games emporium when a terrifying cloud of flying insects emerged from a vent and repeatedly stung her son Austin, 4, sending him to an emergency room. Now he’s developed a psychological fear of the whole Chuck E. Cheese entertainment package. A spokeswoman for the restaurant “said that no one else was stung that day, and an exterminator’s visit showed ‘no evidence of a swarm of killer gnats.'” (Janon Fisher, “Suit Bites Chuck E. ‘Fleas'”, New York Post, Nov. 19).
Chuck E. Cheese gnat swarm
According to Kimberly Halpern’s lawsuit, her family was visiting a Staten Island branch of the kid’s pizza-and-games emporium when a terrifying cloud of flying insects emerged from a vent and repeatedly stung her son Austin, 4, sending him to an emergency room. Now he’s developed a psychological fear of the whole Chuck E. Cheese entertainment […]
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The guys who planted the finger in the Wendy’s chili made one big error; there was forensic evidence that someone much smarter than they were could scrutinize.
This family has done it one better. By claiming a mysterious hit and run bug attack there is no contradictory evidence.
As for damanges, would any reasonable person consider it a harm to never go to Chuck E. Cheese again?
There could still be contradictory evidence — or perhaps more exactly, a contradictory lack of evidence. If the alleged bugs were hanging out in the alleged vent for a significant period of time, there would presumably be evidence (dead bugs, or perhaps microscopic bug poop) that a suitably expensive forensic specialist could look for.
And if it was truly a hit-and-run attack — the bugs showed up, stayed only briefly in the vent, committed the dastardly deed and left — then it seems to me that that would be a self-defeating claim. At least in most states, property owners don’t have strict liability to their guests; they’re only responsible for hazards that they know about (or reasonably should have known about) and fail to correct. If a customer spills liquid in an aisle, and you slip on it fifteen seconds later, you probably have no case, because it’s highly unlikely that the property owner was even aware of the hazard (or should have been aware of it), let alone have any chance to correct it or warn about it. The same logic would presumably apply to roaming clouds of killer bugs, especially since unlike a spill, the bugs don’t even have the common courtesy to stay in one place and wait to be detected.
A kid who doesn’t want to go to Chunky Cheese, and they’re complaining? I’d have been thrilled.
Gnats sting? News to me, and I’ve walked through swarms of gnat so thick I couldn’t see out of them. maybe it’s some previously unknown species of gants… who work for the tooth fairy in her global oppostion to the Santa Claus cartel…