Ex-Trainer Sues Sea World Over Whale Injuries

Just days after Sea World officials decided to let humans rejoin killer whales in the water for performances, a former trainer Thursday sued the park. He alleges that injuries inflicted by two of the giant mammals during a show last year were caused by the negligence of Sea World and its parent company.

In his San Diego Superior Court lawsuit, Jonathan Smith charges that Sea World and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich “negligently and carelessly owned, maintained, trained, inspected, controlled, supervised, located, transported and placed said killer whales,” thereby exposing him to serious injury.

The suit alleges that Sea World officials concealed the “dangerous propensities of killer whales” from Smith and assured him it was safe for him to participate in the dramatic shows though he had no formal training.

Other charges against the park and its corporate parent include fraud, battery and the infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit, the first to be filed by an injured trainer in San Diego, names Sea World, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and 35 unidentified individual defendants and seeks unspecified damages.

Jackie Hill, a Sea World spokeswoman, said park officials have not seen the lawsuit and have no comment.

Smith, a 21-year-old business major at Point Loma Nazarene College, was injured during a performance a year ago today when two killer whales seized him in their jaws and repeatedly dragged him 32 feet to the bottom of the pool. After about 2 1/2 minutes, during which he was smashed against the floor of the tank, Smith escaped. He was hospitalized for nine days with bruised kidneys and ribs and a 6-inch laceration on his liver.

At the time, there was scant media coverage. One brief newspaper account quoted former chief trainer David Butcher, who was fired in December after another trainer was seriously injured, as saying, “These guys were playing and got a little carried away and bumped into Jon.”

In an interview Thursday, Smith said he vividly remembers the experience that led to his co-workers’ calling him Jonah. “I remember it crystal clear,” he said. “I think there came a point where I may have thought, ‘This is it, I’m going to die.’ ”

Smith now works as a leasing agent for SoCal Development. He said he has continuing medical problems as a result of his injuries.

“Not only have I suffered physically, I think to an extent I have suffered emotionally as well,” Smith said. “I am still recovering. . . . I’m not up to 100% physical shape or near that yet.”

Smith said he was not suing to recover money for medical bills--worker’s compensation paid the hospital tab--he just wants to prevent anyone else from suffering the same way.

In discussing Sea World’s decision to resume having the trainers swim with the whales, he said: “I’m not going to say they’re wrong, and I’m not going to say they’re right. I just don’t want to see anyone get hurt again and have to go through what I went through.”

Meanwhile, Sea World of San Diego President Robert Gault said that animal trainers who in December were prohibited from entering tanks alongside the park’s giant killer whales could be back in the water by the end of the month.

Trainers were ordered out of the tanks at parks in San Diego, Ohio and Florida in December, when William Jovanovich, chairman of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pledged that trainers would “never again enter” the pools.

Newly formulated safety procedures could allow trainers at Sea World in San Diego to return to killer whale tanks late in March, when the park begins a yearlong 25th anniversary celebration with a new killer whale show, according to Gault, a longtime Sea World executive who became president of the San Diego park in November.

However, “there’s no sense of urgency, and there’s no schedule” for getting trainers back into the tanks, Gault said Thursday. “But we are interested in doing it in a relatively short period of time.”

Banned After Accidents

Sea World banned trainers from entering the water with the whales after the park revealed that San Diego trainers had been involved in 14 accidents from August to December, some of which produced severe injuries.

Sea World’s San Diego president, Jan Schultz, chief trainer Butcher, and marine biologist Lanny Cornell were fired in the wake of those accidents. Schultz, a 17-year veteran at Sea World, subsequently sued the park, alleging breach of contract and breach of good faith. He is seeking unspecified damages.

During a rare press conference at the San Diego park Dec. 8, Jovanovich told reporters he thought trainers should “never again enter” the whales’ pools, either during training or performances.

However, Jovanovich also acknowledged that Sea World executives believed that a permanent ban was “too Draconian.”

When trainers return to the water, they will do so in a severely restricted manner, Gault said.

Only trainers with suitable experience will enter the tanks, and only with “an animal that we’re comfortable with,” Gault said. “There will be some procedures where a trainer will be in the water and others where they will not be in the water.”

By the end of next week, three of the seven whales that have been in San Diego will have been shipped to parks in Ohio and Texas. That will leave the San Diego park with four whales--Orky, Corky, Shamu and Kandu. Orky was the whale involved in a highly publicized accident Nov. 21 that left a trainer hospitalized with serious injuries.

‘More Manageable’

Those transfers “will get our (whale) population down to a more manageable size,” Gault said. With that smaller population, Sea World’s remaining whales should behave with “more predictability and consistency,” he said.

Besides decreasing the whale population, Sea World’s executives have spent the past three months “working on an evaluation of our training staff and their experience level,” Gault said. “We’ve been ensuring that we have the proper trainers” working with the whales.

In San Diego, that evaluation of safety procedures is being conducted by Michael Scarpuzzi, a trainer with “15 years of killer whale experience,” Gault said. Scarpuzzi previously worked for Sea World in Ohio and Florida.

Scarpuzzi is “working diligently on developing training manuals for trainers,” Gault said. “Trainers will understand what is expected of them (when they enter the water with whales). There will be no assumptions being made.”

Sea World “has made wonderful progress during the last 90 days,” Gault said. “But it’s a matter of doing our homework. . . . It’s an ongoing learning process, not something you just press a button and do.”

“Each park is operating at its own pace, depending upon the experience level of trainers and the animals they’re working with,” Gault said. Consequently, trainers at other parks could enter the water before their counterparts in San Diego.

During the past month, trainers have returned to the water in Sea World’s dolphin and sea lion and otter shows. However, trainers have not been in the water with killer whales for training sessions or performances.

Smith, meanwhile, said he never intended to have a career as a whale trainer but rather fell into the Sea World job while a sophomore in college because he thought it would be fun.

“One day, I thought it would be neat to be a trainer; I had no experience whatsoever,” Smith said, adding that his formal training “was kind of learn as you go . . . it was kind of a trial-and-error method.”

Smith had worked with the killer whales for only two months before the accident.

In an interview with The Times last year, he said he believes he was hired in November, 1985, because he was athletic, a strong swimmer and could “speak well on a microphone.”

Smith said he has been told that his doctors believe he has recovered as well as he has because he was in top physical shape at the time of the accident. But Smith credits a higher power: “I’m here because God kept His hand on me. . . . It’s not me that deserves the credit, it’s the Lord.”

Smith’s attorney, Charles Bleiler of San Diego, said one key allegation against Sea World relates to fraud. Bleiler said that, immediately after the episode causing his client’s injuries, park officials attempted to prevent the public from learning what had occurred, causing a delay in medical attention.

“In their attempt to conceal facts from the public, they failed to call an ambulance to the scene and removed him several hundred yards from the stage area by a much less conspicuous means,” Bleiler said. “They continued the show on as if nothing had happened. As a result, his injuries were aggravated.”

In addition, Bleiler claims Harcourt Brace Jovanovich is guilty of fraud because it “was aware that killer whales are capable and likely to act in concert while performing attacks” but nonetheless the company “placed a newly acquired and known-dangerous whale in close proximity to female killer whales,” increasing the likelihood of an attack.

The attorney also charged that Sea World and its parent company bear strict liability for Smith’s injuries because they were inflicted by wild animals.

“If you have a wild animal and are aware of its vicious disposition and dangerous propensities, as Sea World was, then you are basically responsible for any damage caused,” Bleiler said. “This attack went on for about 2 1/2 minutes. That’s a pretty long time.”

Times staff writer Leslie Wolf contributed to this story.