Who Pays for a Girl’s Horror? : Family Sues After Mountain Lion Mauls 5-Year-Old, but County Says It’s Not Liable for Animal’s Attack

Five years ago, Laura Small, a bright and friendly preschooler looking for tadpoles in Caspers Wilderness Park, was attacked by a mountain lion, her skull crushed by the feline’s powerful jaw.

A hiker grabbed a stick and poked the cat in the eyes until it dropped the 5-year-old El Toro girl and fled.

Laura, now 10, survived the mauling, but was blinded in one eye, partially paralyzed, and left to cope with an assortment of painful physical and emotional scars.

The attack was an extremely rare occurence in California, experts said. It was the first reported in decades.

No one denies that Laura’s life was forever changed by the March 23, 1986, incident. What is being debated is whether anyone is to blame.

On Monday, after years of legal wrangling, a lawsuit pursued by Laura’s family will go before a Superior Court jury, which will decide if Orange County was negligent.

Most lawsuits such as this one are settled out of court. In this case, both parties have been unyielding.

“The bottom line is that (the county) can’t be liable for the acts of a wild mountain lion,” said Barry Allen, the county’s attorney. “They shouldn’t be able to sue, that’s our feeling.”

The Small family sees it differently. “The county’s not responsible for the mountain lion’s action, but for its own actions and its inability to warn the public about the dangers in the park,” said the family’s attorney, Wylie A. Aitken.

The Smalls contend in their lawsuit that park officials knew about the danger of mountain lions, but presented an image to the public, orally and in brochures, that the area was safe and that the cougars had a “healthy aversion to humans.”

Further, the lawsuit alleges, wild animals were, in effect, lured into contact with the public by the county’s placement of water, shrubbery and eating places around the park.

Aitken has said that park officials had conversations with state authorities and even circulated a memo about several menacing mountain lion sightings, acknowledging that there was a problem.

“If you know of any known danger, you have a duty to warn the public,” Aitken said. “And they knew there was a danger.”

Allen said county officials knew there were mountain lions, but to their knowledge, “a mountain lion had never attacked a human in California.”

Allen said county officials were having discussions with state authorities about the cougar sightings, but they were unaware of any danger. Also, he said, the cougars “belonged to the state. They were the state’s mountain lions and we couldn’t do anything with them.”

The family hopes that the lawsuit will force “the county to take responsibility for the attack,” said Laura’s mother, Susan Mattern-Small.

Laura said she is not too interested in the outcome of the trial and has no plans for any money she might win, other then using it to pay for college and medical school so she can become a neurosurgeon.

“I’m just tired of going through this. It will be nice when it’s over,” she said. “I waited so long that I really don’t care anymore. . . . If we win that’s great. In general, I don’t care.”

Despite her age at the time, and the massive head injuries she sustained, Laura, who is expected to testify, vividly remembers parts of the attack.

In a calm account, she said she and her mother were searching for tadpoles in a stream in the park, which is near San Juan Capistrano, when she heard rustling in a bush. “I thought it was a bunny rabbit at first,” Laura said.

The next thing she recalls is the mountain lion “dragging me all on the ground and there were a whole bunch of thorns, and I got thorns in my knees and stuff, and my mom started screaming.

“A man we didn’t know came up with a stick and poked the mountain lion in the eyes until it dropped me. . . . I thought it was a big dog that had gotten me.”

Since the mauling, Laura has undergone 15 operations and is expected to have several others, including a couple this summer to stretch hair-bearing scalp over scarred areas of her head. Until several years ago, she had to constantly wear a bicycle helmet to protect an exposed portion of her brain where her skull had been smashed. She has had a plastic plate implanted to cover the hole. “It’s bulletproof,” she said with a smile.

She has struggled to cope with paralysis of her right leg and arm, which makes it difficult for her to participate in baseball, tag and other sports she enjoys. “I really like to play sports and stuff, but I can’t really. I have trouble playing very good,” she said.

Perhaps the cruelest obstacle she has had to overcome has been the teasing from schoolmates at Olivewood Elementary School.

“Some of the kids make fun of me a lot and call me ‘Mountain Lion Girl’ and things like that,” she said. “I don’t pay attention to it anymore.”

Mattern-Small said her child’s ordeal has been an emotional strain on the whole family. “You just go day to day, just trying to get through it. I still feel like we’re not over this yet. There’s still more doctors and this lawsuit. . . . We can never quite get over it.”

Laura is determined not to let any of her disabilities get her down and eagerly pursues activities such as ballet, horseback riding and playing with her dog, Ebony. Despite the taunts, she has managed to do well in school. Recently, she won a districtwide writing contest for a book of poems she wrote.

For the most part, she said: “I think I pretty much have put this behind me.”