Lawyer for Young Victim of Cougar Says County Inaction Led to Attack : Trial: But the defense attorney says in closing argument that while the wilderness park belongs to the county, the mountain lion belonged to the state.

The attorney for an El Toro girl mauled by a mountain lion told a jury in closing arguments Wednesday that she was also the victim of bureaucratic bungling.

“You don’t let a poor young girl suffer because two agencies can’t get together and decide who can catch a mountain lion,” attorney Wylie A. Aitken, representing Laura Small’s family in its lawsuit against the county, said in closing arguments.

Before a packed courtroom, Barry Allen, the county’s defense attorney, countered that the county could not be “liable for the acts of a wild mountain lion.”

For four weeks, jurors in Orange County Superior Court have heard testimony from wildlife biologists, park rangers, doctors and Small family members. The jurors now are asked to decide whether county officials were negligent in the mountain lion attack on Laura Small at Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park.

The March 23, 1986, mauling left the 10-year-old girl blinded in one eye and partially paralyzed.

Aitken told the jury Wednesday that the case “isn’t about the mountain lion, it’s about asking (county officials) to be responsible for their own conduct.”

Throughout the trial, Aitken has contended that county officials knew there was a danger of mountain lions in the park but didn’t do anything about it. He offered the testimony of two park rangers who conceded that they were concerned about several “unusual” cougar sightings, including a few times in which the animals appeared to “threaten” hikers.

Bruce Buchman, the senior park ranger at the time, testified that he discussed with his supervisor the possibility of warning the public about the problem. The supervisor, Buchman said, planned to review the idea with other county officials, but Laura was attacked before any decision had been made.

Also, county officials testified that they were concerned enough about the mountain lion sightings that they arranged a meeting with the state Department of Fish and Game. But that, too, never occurred because of the attack on Laura.

“A number of bungling moves were made,” Aitken said in criticizing the officials and the bureaucracy of the county government. “It’s a system that didn’t allow for individualism, common sense or good judgment. . . . It’s a system so rigid, it borders on the ludicrous.”

Aitken told the jury about several internal memos and a newsletter that county officials circulated about the unusual mountain lion sightings. He said the documents represented the county officials’ concern but also showed “failure to act, a failure to delegate and a failure to protect the public.”

Allen, the county’s defense attorney, however, said the county was not negligent and acted properly considering the information that was available to it at the time. The case, he said, was “about a mountain lion and what was known about them in 1986.”

No one then, he said, knew that mountain lions were a threat to the public.

“There had never been an attack on a human in Southern California in recorded history” before the Laura Small incident, he said, adding that wildlife experts at that time never “thought that a mountain lion was going to attack a human.”

“How could you say that the county of Orange could have foreseen that an attack would occur?” he asked the jurors. Mountain lion attacks were “too rare to be a danger.”

Further, Allen argued, the cougar was the property of the state and did not belong to the county.

“We own the park, not the mountain lion,” he said.

Additionally, the county wasn’t negligent because of a state law which he said absolves a public entity from any liability that occurs in a natural and unimproved area, like the park’s Nature Trail, where the attack occurred. He said that the attack took place in an undeveloped “wilderness” setting.

Aitken, however, disagreed, saying that the Nature Trail was made for, and presented, “as a nice, easy hike for the public.”

During Allen’s closing comments, he cautioned the jury of six men and six women not to be swayed by “sympathy, prejudice and passion for the little girl because of the horrible injuries she received.”

He said that there were “very tragic injuries to a very nice little girl.” Nonetheless, he said, it wasn’t the county’s fault.

“The county can’t warn (the public) about all the dangers that occur in a wilderness park. You can’t hold the county responsible for that. . . . There are a lot of dangers in life,” Allen said.