Disneyland Death: the Cost

For nearly a year, doctors have worked to repair Lieu Thuy Vuong, to restore feeling to the side of her face where a 9-pound piece of metal ripped from a Disneyland ride struck her last Christmas Eve.

For 12 long months, Vuong has been unable to escape the accident that stole the life of her husband while their 6-year-old son and 8-year-old grandson looked on.

The accident upended Vuong’s life forever and also changed both Disneyland and the laws that regulate theme park safety. As the first anniversary approaches, attorneys are still trying to determine the amount of compensation she should receive for her loss.

It had been a bright pre-Christmas morning last winter when the family joined the throng waiting to board the Columbia, a replica of an 18th century tall ship and one of the park’s tamest rides. It was the boys’ first visit to the home of Mickey Mouse, a highlight of a 10-day escape from their rainy Duvall, Wash., home.

As the stately ship approached the pier, a substitute worker flung a mooring line around a cleat on the still-moving boat. Under the strain, the bolts securing the cast-iron cleat sheared off, hurtling the hunk of metal into the crowd. The cleat broke the worker’s ankle before striking Vuong and her husband, Luan Phi Dawson.

Two days later, Dawson, a 33-year-old senior computer programmer and test engineer at Microsoft, was taken off life support, dead from a severe skull fracture and hemorrhaging in the brain. Cal/OSHA, the state’s worker safety agency, later ruled that Disneyland had failed to properly train the worker to dock the boat and fined the park $12,500.

Today, Vuong, 44, remains under a doctor’s care in Washington state after numerous surgeries, her attorney said. Nearly 1,000 miles south, the attorney and Walt Disney Co. officials are attempting to place a dollar value on her young husband’s life.

“Mrs. Vuong has been through a year of treatment and we are reaching the time when we can begin to assess the extensive damage that has been done to her family,” said her attorney, Wylie A. Aitken.

Under state law, Vuong, a Vietnamese immigrant, has a year to sue Disneyland over the accident. Disneyland officials have agreed to extend the deadline while the parties negotiate, a park spokesman said.

Aitken said no dollar amounts have been discussed but that talks with the theme park remain cordial.

“It’s too early to tell if I’m going to get a legal version of the Indiana Jones ride or get a smooth ride,” Aitken said.

Dawson was “very bright and had a very bright future” at Microsoft, said Aitken, who has made several trips to the computer giant’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters to come up with projections for Dawson’s career path at the company.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to provide Dawson’s salary or total compensation, saying such information is confidential.

Legal scholars say Vuong, who also has two grown children from a previous marriage, will likely emerge with a massive award.

Career experts can estimate the arc of Dawson’s future at Microsoft and project his earnings, including such things as stock options and company growth--which could be enormous. And under state laws, the family also can recover for the loss of companionship and for the emotional shock of seeing a family member killed. In addition, Vuong can recover for her injuries.

Gary Schwartz, a UCLA law professor specializing in torts, said there are no practical limits to what Vuong could receive, especially since the liability appears clear-cut. If the case goes to court, he said, juries typically hold corporations to a high standard.

Schwartz said the highest settlement or verdict he’s seen in such a case involved a 47-year-old Silicon Valley executive who lost his left forearm and the fingers on his right hand in 1987 when the small plane he was flying had engine trouble and crashed on the San Diego Freeway in Long Beach. The crash killed a flight instructor. The executive negotiated a $31-million settlement with the makers of the aircraft.

“I’m sure the reason that settlement was that large are the career earnings,” Schwartz said.

Aitken said that right now Vuong is focusing on her young son Antoine and making it through the next few weeks.

“The most difficult part will be getting Mrs. Vuong through the anniversary date and through the holidays,” he said.

The last year has also been rough on Christine Carpenter, the Disneyland assistant manager hurt in the accident. Carpenter, 31, has undergone at least 10 operations to repair damage to her left foot, which was severely mangled.

Friends say she still must use a cane to get around and continues to take pain medication, but hopes to return to work at the park.

Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said Carpenter remains “a cast member” while out on medical disability, but “out of respect for Christi’s privacy,” he declined to say if and when she might return to work.

A Cal/OSHA report in March blamed inadequate training for the accident. Officials said Carpenter had never received hands-on instruction in how to dock the natural-gas-powered vessel, which cruises a fake river at the park on a submerged rail.

Carpenter told investigators that she had received training on the Mark Twain, a paddle wheel ship operating from the same dock, but not on the Columbia. She had been filling in for a regular worker on the day of the accident because of a scheduling gap.

After the accident, Disneyland reevaluated safety procedures on all its rides. It reinstated, on nearly every ride, lead ride operators, who function as foremen and who had largely been phased out.

The park also shredded its old procedures for the Columbia and created a system in which the captain and a bow worker signal each other with bells to ensure that the ship has stopped at the dock. Only then does the bow worker drop a line over the side of the ship to be attached to a mooring post on the dock.

The 212-ton Columbia, overhauled both cosmetically and structurally, returned to operation in June with the new signal bells and a speedometer for safety.

Disneyland had been widely criticized for cleaning up the accident scene before investigators for the Anaheim police--who themselves were criticized for responding slowly--could inspect it. The criticisms led to policy changes at the park and the Police Department, which now stations an officer there.

Perhaps the accident’s biggest legacy is new legislation requiring state safety inspections of theme park rides.

Legislation spawned by the accident ended a three-decade battle to regulate the state’s amusement parks. Assemblyman Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), the bill’s author, said news reports after the accident raised public awareness that the state did not inspect theme park rides and that parks were not required to report accidents. California had been one of only 12 states that did not regulate parks.

In September, Gov. Gray Davis signed the bill, creating the first state inspection program for theme parks. The program will set statewide safety standards for rides and requirements for accident reporting and inspections. It will go into effect in 2001.

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Times staff writer E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report.