Last October, 63-year-old Bob Boardman was gored to death in front of family and friends by a 350-pound mountain goat in the Olympic National Park. Yesterday, John Messina, an attorney representing Boardman’s family, announced that he’d filed $10 million in wrongful death lawsuits against the park on behalf of the family of the Port Angeles hiker.
Which brings us to today, with Messina defending the $10 million in claims. Messina argues that the park received complaints about the temperamental goat for four years and had a responsibility to remove it before it followed and fatally gored Boardman:
“A particularly dangerous animal was not removed from the park… I mean, three strikes and you’re out, and this animal had a lot more than three strikes. Even according to the park’s policies, it should have been removed.”
Which brings me to this question:
It seems to me that it is important to understand what sort of menace the goat was before this happened. Did it simply pester people and try to eat their lunch? Did it aggressively charge at others? Were there other injuries? In what way was it a nuisance?
I’m sure the Goat Justice League will want to weigh in as well.
http://www.goatjusticeleague.org
Did the incidents/attacks tend to happen in the same place? Is it possible that the goat’s territory overlapped with areas frequented by park visitors? Being an herbivore, the goat doesn’t seem like it would have other reasons to attack people, unlike bears or great cats.
What if the lack of action by the park was partly due to lack of funding? Would taking that large amount of money do anything to help prevent future incidents like this?
@40: *bows* Thank you for appreciating!
Whatever. I blame it on gay marriage, and vote for pancakes.
I voted “no”, but if I’d read @9 or @42 first I would have been more sympathetic toward “yes”. Wild native species are one thing, but between two invasives (human and goat), morally, it’s a tossup that I’d have no problem seeing human win. And then, the goat is crazy, not a normal goat. And then, why wasn’t here a warning about this goat? I don’t know about $10 mil but I wouldn’t mind seeing the family get something.
Should the park service kill all of the wolves, mountain lions, moose (no, seriously, they’re dangerous), bison, etc etc etc too? They’re all extremely dangerous and will kill you if you get too close. When you walk in the woods with wild animals you’re taking a risk. Most parks have signs saying that wild animals are FUCKING WILD ANIMALS and they’re dangerous. Read the sign and accept the risk or stay in your fucking car!
Maybe the Park Service just needs to have signs saying:
Idiots should not go into Parks
It’s a park…that means wilderness complete with wild animals. If this family were to get $10 million for what happened, why doesn’t every person who gets lost in a park (and some even die while lost) sue the park? Yosemite would be shut down if the park system was responsible for all the unfortunate things that happened there this year alone.
@57: Because you’re describing cases where the park was not negligent. It appears that in this case, the park was negligent.