Disneyland Ordered to Pay $600,000 in Park Slaying

Disneyland’s medical treatment of a young man stabbed to death in the park in 1981 was negligent, an Orange County jury decided Tuesday. It voted to award the man’s mother and brother $600,000 in damages.

The decision, reached by the jury after only three hours of deliberation, was a rare loss for Disneyland, whose lawyers have built a reputation for winning injury cases that are decided by juries.

“We knew we were right,” said Ellen Reynolds, 49, of Riverside, who filed a wrongful death suit after her 18-year-old son, Mel C. Yorba, died in the only homicide in the 31-year history of the Anaheim amusement park.

‘Owed It to Mel’

“We knew we owed it to Mel to have this brought out, so it can’t possibly ever happen to anybody else again,” Reynolds said. “Now, everybody knows we were right.”

Jury foreman David Scott, 23, of Brea said jurors were unanimous in deciding that the park was negligent. The 9-3 vote reflected only a disagreement over the amount of damages, he added.

The Superior Court trial, which began July 9 before Judge Jerrold S. Oliver, was largely an attack on park emergency procedures and a challenge to the performance of Disneyland employees on March 7, 1981, when Yorba was stabbed in Tomorrowland after a scuffle with another park visitor. James O’Driscoll of San Diego, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the case, is now serving a 16-years-to-life sentence.

The jurors were faced with sorting out conflicting testimony on almost every point, from doctors, paramedics, experts and eyewitnesses to the incident, which occurred at 10 p.m. on a Saturday.

Scott said the critical evidence was a written list of policy and procedures compiled by Disneyland management, which required that paramedics be called in all life-threatening cases. A registered nurse employed by Disneyland, Elizabeth Santy Micco, testified that she decided to send Yorba to a hospital immediately, rather than summon Anaheim paramedics.

“It wasn’t that hard for us to figure how they were negligent,” Scott said. “Disneyland didn’t follow their own standard operating procedures.”

Scott did not offer an explanation as to how the jury arrived at the $600,000 award, but he did say that the panel considered amounts up to $1 million during deliberations.

Yorba was stabbed with an 8 1/2-inch knife through the tip of the heart, diaphragm and liver--a wound described as fatal by the two doctors who treated him at the former Palm Harbor General Hospital, now called the Medical Center of Garden Grove.

Dr. Robert Barros testified that Yorba arrived at the hospital with no vital signs. “I think only God could have saved him,” Barros told jurors. Dr. Louis Taucher, the chest surgeon who tried to revive Yorba, said the wound was fatal. Taucher invoked the fury of plaintiffs’ attorney John A. Luetto Monday when he testified that Yorba would have died even if he had been stabbed “in the operating room.”

Luetto branded Taucher’s testimony the “so-what” defense--that even if Disneyland had acted properly, Yorba would have died anyway. Luetto told jurors that to believe Taucher, they would “have to disbelieve everyone else.”

A key point of Luetto’s case was the testimony of a trauma surgeon who said that Yorba stood a 50% chance of survival had he been given proper emergency medical care.

Disneyland attorney Richard E. McCain, in closing arguments Tuesday, said that calling paramedics to treat Yorba in Tomorrowland and then waiting for them to arrive would have killed him.

“What chance does Mr. Yorba have there while we wait those precious minutes? None at all,” McCain told the jurors.

During the two-week trial, several witnesses talked about those minutes after the stabbing. Micco, the park nurse, testified that within seven minutes of receiving notice of the incident, she had rendered elementary care to Yorba and ordered him placed in a park van for immediate transport to the nearest hospital emergency room.

Micco also testified that she was told “orally” not to call paramedics to Disneyland. She said she did not remember written park policy requiring that paramedics be summoned in cases of life-threatening emergencies.

But a visitor to the park, registered nurse Alice Sylvester of San Diego, testified that she was at Yorba’s side immediately after the stabbing. Sylvester told jurors that she pleaded in vain with park security officers to help and that at least 20 minutes passed before Yorba was placed in the van.

“I kept asking, ‘Where is the ambulance? Where are the paramedics? This man needs help,’ ” Sylvester testified.

Witnesses called by Disneyland and log books kept by nurses, security guards and the hospital, where Yorba arrived with no pulse, respiration or heartbeat, indicated that Yorba was in the emergency room less than 20 minutes after the stabbing.

Since Yorba’s death, there have been “minor changes” in Disneyland’s written policies and procedures on life-threatening emergencies, according to park spokesman Robert A. Roth, who has declined to specify those changes.

But Roth said Yorba’s death did trigger one change--park officials have decided to keep an ambulance at Disneyland. “We did have an ambulance here for a period of time, from shortly after the Yorba incident, maybe two or three months later,” Roth said earlier.

“We kept it for three years but discontinued it when we found it wasn’t serving any meaningful purpose,” Roth said. ‘There was no need.’

Efforts to reach Roth for comment on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

But a Disneyland spokesman, reading from a statement late Tuesday, said: “We are very surprised at the verdict. Our people followed all appropriate emergency medical procedures in aiding Mr. Yorba. But we will have no further comment until we have a chance to review the decision and evaluate our alternatives before the court.”

When filed in 1981, the lawsuit asked for $60 million in damages for Reynolds and 25-year-old Mark Yorba, Mel’s brother. Final court papers filed before trial asked damages “according to proof.”