Two Oregon teens who got stuck upside down on a ride at the Oaks Amusement Park in Portland filed a $2 million lawsuit. This week, a jury awarded them $550K.
The two teens were among 28 people who found themselves hanging upside down for 25 minutes on the AtmosFEAR ride at Oaks Amusement Park in Portland, Oregon, in June 2024. Nine people filed lawsuits against the amusement park. Seven people settled, each for an undisclosed amount.
The teens were at the amusement park celebrating their eighth-grade graduations from two different Portland-area schools. After getting on the 360-degree swinging pendulum ride, the ride got stuck while they were about 50 feet in the air, and upside down.
According to The Oregonian, the teens said “they remember the overwhelming pain of blood pooling in their heads, the vomit from other riders periodically falling to the ground and the extreme fear that the shoulder harnesses that were holding them in might suddenly give way and they’d plummet 100 feet to their deaths.”
One of the teens claims she now suffers from anxiety and fears riding elevators or traveling on airplanes because she worries she’ll become trapped or die. The other, a national champion in Korean martial arts, said lingering injuries from the ride eventually prevented her from competing in tournaments. Both said they have had to seek counseling.
“I remember thinking that they didn’t want people seeing something that was going to happen — like us falling or us passing out all limp in the harnesses,” one of the teens said Tuesday in court, adding, “So many people were throwing up at that point, and I thought I might throw up, too.”
The other teen told the court, “I didn’t want people to see me die. It’s hard to be in a position like that, where your friends are underneath you.”
The amusement park and ride manufacturer admitted they were at fault, eventually
Oaks Park, a 121-year-old amusement park, and Zamperla, the manufacturer of the AtmosFEAR ride, each admitted that one or both of them were at fault for the ride’s malfunction. However, they didn’t do so until shortly before the trial began.
“Oaks Park and the manufacturer had denied liability, basically blamed these families, called them liars for over two years in court,” KATU News reports Michael Fuller, an attorney representing the teenagers, said. “And then last week, a week before trial, they finally admitted that they were actually at fault. So this is vindication for these families.”
A Multnomah County jury awarded each of the two teens $275,000 on Wednesday.
“Our priority has always been to protect our child and to find out exactly what happened,” one of the teens’ fathers said after the jury’s decision. “We need real answers and not excuses and deflections.”
“It was horrible to understand that this affected them not just during the 25 minutes on the ride but even in the years after,” Fuller said. “They had to seek counseling, treatment, medication.”
The Oaks Park Association told KATU News that while they “agree that the ride should not have become stuck,” they are “grateful that all of the riders are safe, and this incident is now resolved.”