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The Legal Geeks
Live from SDCC! Jurassic Park: Liability for Dinosaur Attacks Never Goes Extinct
Recorded live at San Diego Comic Con on July 24, 2025, our Jurassic Park panel!
Law finds a way….for amusement parks with dinosaurs to be liable for employee safety, injuring guests, and invasive species. Can dinosaur DNA be patented? Could Jurassic Park be insured? Would parents sue for children left at a youth camp to fend for themselves against dinosaurs? Could injured guests sue as a class action? Join our panel featuring Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman, Magistrate Judge Stan Boone, Kathy Steinman, Christine Peek, Stephen Tollafield, and Micheal Dennis for their analysis of Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, and Camp Cretaceous. Moderated by Joshua Gilliland, Esq. Presented by The Legal Geeks. Room: Grand 12 & 13, Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina
No part of this recording should be considered legal advice.
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Hello, my name is Joshua Gilliland, one of the founding attorneys of the Legal Geeks. The following was recorded at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24th 2025. It is our Jurassic Park Liability for Dinosaur Attacks Never Goes Extinct panel. We had so much fun putting this panel together and a great time at Comic-Con. I hope you enjoy the recording.
Speaker 3:We'll do some introductions right now while we're waiting. First up, Magistrate Judge Stacey Beckerman from Portland. Thank you, Judge. Well, we're proud of Magistrate Judge Stan Bloomfans. Unfortunately, his flight canceled and he's unable to be here. A little chaos theory that happened, but all plans away and we're going to be okay. We also have Kathy Steiner from the CBC, kristen Stephen, michael, so should I know my first, first day of high school today.
Speaker 4:It's just like you know, Josh always says well, Mike knows where all the bodies are buried, which isn't true at all. There's only one body, so we're getting there, but that's like from 1998?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's a long time ago and far away in Sacramento. So let's begin. Alright, we are here to talk about Jurassic Park, we'll hit on Jurassic World, we'll talk about Camp Cretaceous. We won't really get into the chaos theory, but stay tuned for that. And this is lots of great animation for the rest of the party as well.
Speaker 4:So for the panelists what is your favorite species of dinosaur? I'm an Ankylosaurus kind of guy. A little throwback to me coming as Dr Hammond, the older person in the script. It's like a giant armadillo I guess you still see walking around today.
Speaker 6:so I'm kind of fond of that one, the velociraptor.
Speaker 2:Velociraptor because they're clever yeah, I always liked the triceratops. They just seemed like kind of gentle giants, like kind of fearsome but cool just cool.
Speaker 7:So I don't have a favorite species. But as for individual dinosaurs, it's a tie between Bumpy and Cindy.
Speaker 5:Kathy, uh, dinosaurs.
Speaker 3:Oh, Triceratops for me. So there's no wrong answer, unless you pick something that's not a dinosaur. Alright, so let's talk about wrongful death at Jurassic Park. The first movie is a wrongful death case. You have an employee get beaten. Just imagine being a partner counsel. That would be an unpleasant afternoon. I'm not sure what it's like for a lawyer for a zoo, but that would be concerning. Now there are lots of jets that happen in the first movie and the comedy movies, but just focusing on the first film, we have our corporate spy who typically has issues of contributory negligence.
Speaker 3:The horror story of that poor lawyer just doing his job and killed like that, that's the sin of the movie. He was the true hero and he was murdered by a T-Rex. Now I just don't know if there could be comparative negligence, but I think it's the kids with the flashlight or the signal of the T-Rex. If those meddling children had been coming out of the flashlight we wouldn't have a movie, it would have just been really slow. We have Sam Jackson dying in Hulk again, which is a motif with his movie characters. Lucy Minnelli is also a motif and he theoretically just assumed the risk of going out, knowing that there were molester actors running around.
Speaker 3:Now you have the Doctor who look at the other movies in the animated series. It's like is there a good guy or a bad guy? It's really hard to tell, but it's Steve. Lund who's responsible for all this? And at the end of the day, it's like you're working at a place where dinosaurs have to eat people. There's going to be some assumption of this, but this raises the issue.
Speaker 8:Kathy can you patent on this or do you have any?
Speaker 8:So in the sequel to Jurassic Park, the Lost World, peter Ludlow, who is the new CEO of InGen, he makes a statement. He says an extinct animal that they brought back to life has no rights and exists because we made it, we patented it, we own it. In the original movie, if we go to the next slide, in the original movie they explain how they brought the dinosaurs back and what they did was they were able to create the dinosaurs by using DNA technology. They sequenced DNA that they obtained from blood in a preserved mosquito and then used frog DNA to fill in the gaps in the DNA sequence. And then what happens?
Speaker 8:So the next slide after that? Sorry, two slides, and these are all screenshots from the tutorial that they show in the movie that explains how they created the dinosaurs, and I see we have a Mr DNA right there that I'm going to name. We did not plan that, but the US Supreme Court has actually commented on the issue of whether or not you can patent naturally occurring things, and in 1980, in a case called Dino versus Chocolate Body they said that a person who invents or discovers any new useful manufacture or composition of matter can patent it.
Speaker 8:Sorry, I can't read my notes, and so in that case there was a man by the name of Chakrabadi I don't think I'm pronouncing that correctly. He sought a patent for a human-made genetically engineered bacterium that could break down crude oil to help clean up oil spills, and the court said that that was patentable because it was something that was not naturally occurring. He created it so he could patent it even though the organism itself was quote-unquote natural. And then we get to 2013. In another case, the Supreme Court rule. The case is association of molecular pathology versus myriad genetics, and in that case you have myriad genetics who sequence the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, and for those of you that don't know what that is, it's a very important gene to women, because if there are mutations in that gene, that indicates that you have a higher likelihood for breast cancer. And so Myriad Genetics sequenced the gene and then they invented some diagnostic tools to determine if there were mutations in the gene and they tried to patent it, and the court said they were not allowed to patent it because the sequence itself was a naturally occurring gene. So what we have to ask in this situation is whether or not the DNA sequence, if we can go to the slide with the DNA sequence oh, we're on that one, sorry that one. So. Is this DNA sequence? Oh, we're on that one, sorry that one. So is this DNA sequence naturally occurring? And you have to remember they got it from dinosaur blood and then they put in frog DNA. So who thinks that's naturally occurring you see a couple hands out there and who thinks that is man-made? So the court hasn't ruled on this, but I think the rest of you, I think I would make the argument that it was man-made, because putting together those two things isn't naturally occurring, because I don't think a dinosaur and a frog have made it yet.
Speaker 8:And the other thing I wanted to point out too, to add to my argument, is all right, any bio-majors out there. I was a bio-ma major. I know she's my sister, all right, who knows what is a different or unusual about this DNA sequence? I'll give you a hint. It's at the top of the screen. You may not be able to see it. All right, there's a B Bio majors. Is B a naturally occurring DNA? I see a lot of head shaking. No, that's correct. So it's not what we were taught when I was a bio major. So you have A, c, t and G are your nucleotides, for DNA B is not a naturally occurring one, but according to Google, b can stand for complementary DNA or cDNA, which is actually a man-made sequence. So if we think the graphic designers for this movie were bio majors, they might have actually Indicated to us that this was not naturally occurring, with a man-made and therefore practical.
Speaker 5:But maybe they just made a mistake.
Speaker 3:Thank you, andy, for the ring captains, but we're trying to find a place that's great for the panelists. Leave them on the mics, please. So, michael, let's talk about causation.
Speaker 4:Does causation exist in the air? Well, first I'd like to welcome everybody to Jury Do tonight. The issue of causation is a jury question. You get called for jury duty and it's not a criminal case. Most likely you're going to be having to decide did what the defendant do cause the injury? And we're going to focus on actual and possible cause, because that's what has to be through. We're going to point the one finger tonight about who had a duty to do what and what's that duty to reach. But causation is what comes down to. First you have actual causation.
Speaker 4:This is referred to as but-for. You're asking Mike, what is a but-for? I tell you it is to poop with. Thank you, and this will be my last time around where we go to that. But for causation is what a lot of people refer to as the butterfly effect. You say, well, but for this happening? But for a harness, you wouldn't have fallen into the raptor bin. But for the raptor bin being electronic instead of hand-cranked, you wouldn't have fallen in. But for the designer designing for Raptors, he wouldn't have done it. You go back until you get to that butterfly in Africa that flapped its wings. So the courts have done it and said at some point we have to cut that off, and what they do is they cut it off with foreseeability, and that's where we get to proximate comics, and the trouble I have when I decided to tackle this is that I'm at Comic-Con, where everybody in this room thinks everything is foreseeable.
Speaker 5:They're like well, maybe not in this verse but on verse five.
Speaker 4:this is what's happening and you've got to believe I'm not going to leave Comic-Con without talking about something super. So we have intervening and superseding causation.
Speaker 4:Rarely is it just plaintiff and defendant. There's usually somebody else involved in it and the question is that other person's participation was an interceding cause that just contributes to it, or was it a superseding cause, meaning it cuts off liability, and the example normally used is the car accident where defendant hits the victim. Victim ends up going to the hospital and the doctor commits malpractice. The defendant says and the doctor commits malpractice. The defendant says hey, that doctor's malpractice should cut off my liability. I shouldn't be responsible. And the law has decided no, that malpractice was foreseeable. You're responsible for everything. You're the proximate cause. I think it's kind of unfair to doctors to say that your malpractice is foreseeable.
Speaker 4:Therefore, what you do, we're gonna hold that other guy accountable for it. So I was hoping someone would come as dogs in and I could point at them, but Everyone. If you're a police attorney, you wanna point as many people as possible so you have as many pockets to get a good result for your client. If you're a defense attorney, you wanna do the same thing, so you have someone else that's actually gonna help you through. So you're my jury and, because it's your question, the judges on the panel can't give a decision on this. They decide stuff about duty and breach.
Speaker 4:All right let's throw some scenarios at you. So we have, on the next slide, the Estates of McDougal. Is going to claim Nedry, you are the actual approximate cause. Nedry, of course, is going to argue what do you mean? I'm not the one that turned off. The actual approximate cause, nedry, of course, is going to argue what do you mean? I'm not the one that turned off the power to everything. I actually kept the security on to the Raptors.
Speaker 4:It was Hammond who decided to turn off everything and that's how the Raptors escaped. He's the actual causation. And besides, it's foreseeable that on this island where a hurricane's coming, the power might go out no backup generator kind of thing. So could he get off? Probably not, because there's a timing issue and that Nedry's actions occurred before Hammond turned it off. So he can't really claim well, somebody else did it first.
Speaker 4:And the same thing comes when the engine tries to do a defense of well, somebody else did it first. And the same thing comes when the engine tries to do a defense of well, nedry did everything, nedry did it before. So more than likely it's not a supersede uniform, but it is contributory towards it. So that's something after this panel you'll have to, you know, if you want to decide later and debate about it with your fellow Comic-Conners For each person that died in this, who actually caused it? Who was the proximate cause, and was that something that could cut off the chain of liability? And if you think of one thing Injun warned everybody before anybody died. If I was going to address the jury, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you were warned to cover your butts.
Speaker 4:Did anybody cover their butts. No, they are all responsible, contributory negligence. They should be off the hook. And Josh touched on this earlier Did Dr Malcolm actually killed our beloved attorney? He was the one that decided to step in, pick the flares out and lead them towards the outhouse. As we all know, apparently T-Rexes can't see unless it's moving.
Speaker 5:Although the thing has a nose the size of a Volkswagen.
Speaker 4:it'll disappear if you're not moving. He's the one that threw it. He's the one that led to the outhouse being knocked over. That caused our beloved attorney to move and that's what led to it. Dr Malcolm caused the death of our attorney, not him.
Speaker 5:We got a jury instruction for that.
Speaker 4:This is actually a real one. That's written in the jury. If you're in an emergency situation, you're not held to the same standard as somebody that's right in the jury. If you're in an emergency situation, you're not held to the same standard as somebody that's trying to reflect on the proper course of action. So Dr Malcolm does have the defense of. I was in an emergency situation. There's a T-Rex.
Speaker 4:I did what I thought was right in this situation, although maybe I should have thrown the flares onto the other side of the road, where somebody was not trying to hide.
Speaker 3:Judge Buckerhead, can you assure Jurassic Park?
Speaker 6:Sure, good evening geeks. Obviously, liability insurance is important for any business that's offering an inherently dangerous activity, and it's generally available for businesses like zoos or amusement parks, or maybe a better analogy is like a shark cave diving or something. But the problem is it's expensive, of course. So a lot of companies that offer dangerous activities, so like Disney, for example, is self insured. The only potential limitation for Jurassic Park being insured is you can't insure illegal activities. That's seen as bad policy because you are promoting crimes and so you could not.
Speaker 6:Jurassic Park likely could not get coverage for any unauthorized dinosaur cloning or illegal tours like the Dinosaur. But what if John Hammond shopped around and tried to get liability coverage for Jurassic Park and nobody would insure Jurassic Park? Could the government step in or could courts step in and force insurance companies to insure Jurassic Park? And the short answer is no. Generally, neither governments nor courts can force an insurance company to enter into a contract with a party, and so states of course try to encourage insurance companies to offer coverage, much like California is doing now with respect to offering incentives to insurers to provide homeowners policy in high-risk fire areas. But, of course, if insurance companies do offer a policy and offer worry-free liability insurance for Jurassic Park, and then they were to refuse to pay for any harm caused. That's covered by the policy. That's when the courts step in and force the insurance company to pay, and that happens all the time.
Speaker 5:So what could possibly?
Speaker 3:go wrong. What could possibly go wrong, Christine? Let's talk about disloyal employees.
Speaker 7:Sure, there seems to be a pattern of betrayal in these films and it often involves a company's workers not just turning on it but stealing valuable company assets. And for the sake of expedience here I'm just going to assume that US apply and that jurisdiction venue are proper in the US courts. So let's go over the elements that either InGen or BioSyn respectively would need to show to establish a civil claim for breach of the duty of loyalty.
Speaker 7:The first is a relationship giving rise to the duty of loyalty. The California state a relationship giving rise to the duty of loyalty. The California state. Courts generally hold that an employer-employee relationship is sufficient. So as to Ramsey Cole, it seems reasonably clear that he's an employee. He's described as communications or head of communications for Biosyn. As to Ian Malcolm, a little bit less clear, but Sattler describes him as Biosyn's in-house philosopher and at one point Dodgson purports to fire him. So maybe he is hired as an employee. And then you have Dennis Nedry.
Speaker 7:The source material gives some pretty strong hints that he's probably meant to be an independent contractor. He refers to bidding for the job and another character refers to Nedry's people in Cambridge. So he appears to be affiliated with a separate company. But even assuming that he is an independent contractor, that doesn't necessarily get him out of trouble. He might still owe a fiduciary duty of loyalty if he also qualifies as an agent of InGen. So an agent is someone who represents another in dealing with third parties. So just briefly, the test is if Nedry had been authorized by InGen to deal with third parties on its behalf and setting up the computer system, ingen still retained the right to control Nedry's activities. He might be in an agent-principal relationship.
Speaker 7:Those are more examples of the factual questions that Michael referenced that are likely to be disputed and you might need a jury to decide them. So the second thing you need is the person who owes a duty must have knowingly acted against the employer's interests or knowingly acted on behalf of a party whose interests were adverse to the employer. So for Nedry, he's being paid to steal valuable dinosaur embryos the personal property of InGen and deliver them to Biosyn, ingen's competitor. He also creates a massive safety risk which ultimately leads to property damage, physical injury and death when he fiddles with the computer and security systems. To try to cover up his wrongdoing wrongdoing For Malcolm he discloses to Sattler that the locusts are part of a larger project called Hexapod.
Speaker 2:Allies tells her, where to find the lab.
Speaker 7:Gives her a device that will allow her physical access to the restricted lab so they can steal a locust DNA sample. And finally, as to Ramsey, he points out the location of the elevators to the sub-levels that require special clearance and gives Grant and Sattler 30 minutes alone, knowing and expecting that they will steal a.
Speaker 7:DNA sample. All of this is either against InGen's or Biosense's interest, respectively, and then, finally, there must be damages approximately caused by the breach. Yes, moving on. So the factual wrinkle of interest here is the nature of the property being stolen, specifically the live embryos and DNA samples. The physical embodiment of those things likely carries valuable information about InGen and Biosense research that they've invested a lot of time and effort into developing.
Speaker 7:However, to the extent that the duty of loyalty claim is based on misappropriation of confidential information, the company is going to have to look at whether the trade secret law might supersede the duty of loyalty claim. So, for example, the California Trade Secret Misappropriation Act is a statute that allows recovery of damages for injury caused by the misappropriation of trade secrets, but it's the exclusive remedy for conduct that falls within its terms, and many courts have interpreted CAATSA to broadly supersede claims based on misappropriation of any information that's claimed to be confidential, even if it doesn't actually meet the definition of a trade secret. So if the genetic information that's contained within the embryos and the DNA samples is a trade secret or otherwise is confidential information, this aspect of Nedry's and Malcolm's and Cole's wrongdoing would likely have to be addressed under trade secret law or some other theory that is not superseded.
Speaker 7:So for Dennis however, there may still be a way to allege a duty of loyalty claim based on all of the other ways that he has acted against InGen's interests. Of loyalty claim based on all of the other ways that he has acted against Injin's interests, namely being deceptive and enabling a major security breach that endangers the physical safety of everyone on the island, including himself. Finally, you might ask, aren't Cole and Malcolm just doing their civic duty by disclosing Biosyn's wrongdoing? And it is true that there are various state and federal laws that protect whistleblowers from retaliation by their employers for disclosing what they reasonably believe to be violations of the law in various contexts that doesn't mean, however, that they can facilitate the theft of locust DNA samples, although the federal law does provide a narrow, limited immunity for disclosures to government officials or attorneys solely for the purpose of recording or investigating a suspected violation of the law.
Speaker 7:So, ultimately, the takeaway here is that so you and a scientist have the right idea you should nurture loyalty and treat your workers well.
Speaker 3:So, I think it's a good idea to have lions and wild lions running for payment.
Speaker 4:Just so you know we're talking about this panel.
Speaker 5:People are like oh, that sounds silly, that sounds stupid.
Speaker 4:This is Irvine, california, about an hour and a half north of here. I grew up in the town right next door. This is a real place where you can drive your own little lions. If you look closely at the picture you see you've got somebody not driving their own lane. You have a window open the lady to pet the lions. More than likely it could have been me in the back of that station wagon without a seatbelt and the driver was probably smoking. My parents actually got warnings about be on the lookout for an escaped hippo.
Speaker 5:That happened twice.
Speaker 4:They eventually got shut down because the lions and elephants were escaping and mauling people and guests. So, yep, these are issues that actually have real-life representation.
Speaker 3:I will add watch the documentary Ward about making a movie and it's a ticket from the Birds, her husband, they had 70 lions and they were trying to make this movie. Over 100 people got bit by lions and tigers. It's insane to watch. It's on Peacock. Enjoy your Friday night.
Speaker 4:And, by the way, life is Just For. Ice is still available in. Florida. If anybody wants to go, all right, we have to stick up for our own here.
Speaker 4:If you look at that quote it's quoted all the time from Shakespeare, and it's probably the highest compliment you could actually give to an attorney. What it says is if we want to start a rebellion, we want to overthrow the powers that be and install chaos and get rid of civilization, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the guardians of the law, the gatekeepers that keep us civilized peoples in place, and that is attorneys, so it's kind of a high compliment if the first named character that gets killed off is the blood-sucking attorney Ferreira so that compliment immediately gets taken away.
Speaker 5:There's a couple of memorable ones in the movie.
Speaker 4:When you first see the dinosaurs welcome to Jurassic Park the trembling glass of water and then, yeah, the attorney getting eaten on the outhouse. Thanks Spielberg for that. And if you must know, the next slide there is an exclusive SPCD toy from 2022 is Outhouse Chaos.
Speaker 5:You two can reenact the famous scene where the attorney is in the outhouse getting beaten.
Speaker 4:Your children can play with it. You can do it, so I thought it was my, my duty to stick up for attorneys in this case and see what's he really still back. And because we're talking about an outhouse, I'm gonna talk about duty my second food joke. Thank you on it. There's a lot of duties that are involved with this attorney. That's what I'm not going to talk about. Was he denied a rest break on it?
Speaker 4:There's a lot of duties that are involved with this attorney I'm not going to talk about was he denied a? Rest break because he was on his break, apparently, when the TRX ate him. I'm not going to talk about his duty of confidence to his actual clients when he says we're going to make so much money, it's like what do you mean? We, they hired you. They're going to make a lot of money. What I'm really, really gonna focus on is this duty of confidence?
Speaker 4:this is the first time anybody's ever inspected a Safari for the dinosaurs. And when you don't have the knowledge as an attorney, you're either supposed to find an attorney that does, associate attorney with that does, or gain the knowledge, and that's what most attorneys do.
Speaker 2:They don't want to turn away cases.
Speaker 4:In this case, he has to become knowledgeable, and what we do is attorneys is hire experts.
Speaker 2:So that's what.
Speaker 4:Jura was supposed to do when he's coming to inspect it. There's a similar team so he can get the knowledge to inform. If this part is safe, hebron's a rock star that's what he gets in plain of.
Speaker 2:He gets one person and he's a chaos star. That's what he gets in plain of.
Speaker 4:He gets one person and he's a chaos fetishian. And I looked into chaos theory and we're back to the butterfly effect and his basic role is saying we can't predict anything over a long period of time because there's too many variables. That's what chaos theory goes after. Hey, you're not hopeful at all. Bring in Dr Grant, who spends the whole movie going Wow, they run in herds. Wow, they're not actually cold-blooded, wow, look at this the most beneficial thing, he says, is Humans and dinosaurs have been separated for millions of years.
Speaker 4:We have no idea who it's that You're useless too. Then we have Dr Sadler a paleobiologist. A botanist. What's the botanist going to tell you about the safety of dinosaurs and keeping your guests safe, or how to run an amusement park? I love her character.
Speaker 4:I think she's the most kick-ass character in the movie. She puts Hammond in his place about sexism, about who's going to go rescue somebody. She's awesome. She doesn't know how to run an amusement park. She does not know how to run a safari or a campground. So yeah, I can't convince Dr Malcolm who Steven served me he was going to possibly ask, so I didn't.
Speaker 4:I can convince Dr Hammond. Instead I can do a couple more buttons over the course of the panel. So the only person who has any experience is McDoug, who came over from the game park in Africa and his advice is put the raptors down. His other solution was let's engage the lysine effect so all the dinosaurs will know Koma and die. Nobody listens to him. So I would argue that, in spite of how I want to stick up for Gerard, he fails to do it in confidence because he did not get the knowledge necessary to actually fight.
Speaker 3:Fun fact, my brother named his son Ian.
Speaker 4:Now. I'm going to assume we're in California and the other big issue people have with our beloved attorney is when things get tough. When you have to go. You have to go. According to the other characters, he went running off and abandoned the children. So did he have an actual duty to protect these kids? California, you have generally no duty to protect somebody else.
Speaker 2:There is an exception, and that's if you have a special relationship.
Speaker 4:And I think the law is kind of creepy and says you have a special relationship to protect a child, and I'm like special relationship to a child, Gross. But it's when you're in a sort of custodial capacity and the child is looking to you for their safety and care. You can voluntarily undertake this. So that's kind of the question is, did he have? Did they look to him for their protection? And it's quite obvious they did.
Speaker 4:They kept saying over and over again in panicked voices he left us. He left us. Of course, his version is they wanted to sit with Dr Grant. I don't know how they ended up in my car to begin with, and they the parents. I'm not a teacher, I'm not a coach. The parents entrusted them to their grandfather for their safety, not me. I'm not a teacher, I'm not a coach. The parents entrusted them to their grandfather for their safety, not me.
Speaker 2:If I was prosecuting, I would definitely say he voluntarily did it.
Speaker 4:When he told him to put back, or told Timmy to put back, the night vision goggles that are expensive, he asserted himself into the role of the authority figure and an adult and that's when he took on the custodial relationship and he was responsible for protecting those kids, Naturally he would have been worthless. You saw that T-Rex comes through the sunroof of the Jeep. Those kids held back with their little arms that T-Rex. They wouldn't have been protecting him.
Speaker 4:And then when the car just squished Timmy was safe. Timmy's small Graham would have been crushed by that car. He wouldn't have used it, but he still had that I believe he still had that to be protected.
Speaker 3:Or he could have said put the flashlight down.
Speaker 4:On it and just to leave you. You can't spell, indeed, without engine. I believe they're probably looking for a new current council.
Speaker 5:So inquire with him.
Speaker 3:All right, Stephen, let's talk about Camp Cretaceous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds like there's some Camp Cretaceous fans here. That's great. For those of you who don't know, Camp Cretaceous is a Netflix animated series. It kind of takes place concurrently with the 2015 Jurassic World film. So while Claire and Owen are fighting off the Indominus Rex, so are these six teenagers, except without weapons, without adults and without shoes, with traction.
Speaker 2:So there and when the island gets evacuated at the end of the film, the children are left behind to their own devices on the island, and then ensues seven seasons of them versus dinosaurs. So can the parents or the children sue Jurassic Park for their injuries? It's pretty obvious that, yes, there's negligence the breach of duty to care for these children. Negligent infliction of emotional distress for watching your friends be almost eaten by dinosaurs. Breach of contract, because the parents think they're sending their kids to a fun summer camp when in fact it's like a dinosaur-themed Hunger Games. There's oh, I don't know if it's a product liability. If there's strict liability, if the dinosaurs are products, there might be a liability there. And also false imprisonment, because the children are trapped on this island, they're not able to go anywhere. But the real question is whether the parents are able to sue if they signed a release of claims and liability waiver. And so for all of us who have ever done anything fun, you know that you have to sign a release of liability to do that thing. It's a contractual allocation of risk and it's perfectly legal. You can say I assume the risk of injury if you let me participate in your fun thing, and so chances are that parents of these children signed a liability waiver and courts will generally enforce them if they are clear and unambiguous, if they are specific about the risks that you're going to face, they don't violate public policy and if you knowingly signed the waiver.
Speaker 2:Now, if I was representing the parents, I would say that this is not. Any liability waiver that they signed is not enforceable. We can sue because, first of all, those waivers will only excuse conduct that is based on negligence, simple negligence Someone does an oopsie, you get hurt. You can assume that risk, that's fine. But if there's some sort of gross negligence involved, where there's reckless disregard for someone's safety, or if there's intentional conduct, then you don't.
Speaker 2:That is not within the scope of your release of liability. And of course I would say that exposing children to like huge, building-sized human eating machines is grossly negligent. That is not within the scope of their waiver. And also those that any sort of release might be against public policy, because the state, the government, has an interest in protecting children, as we were just talking about, and so a court might be inclined to excuse a waiver of liability if the children's safety is involved. So if I was representing the parents, I think we'd have a pretty clear shot. Any waiver of liability is not worth the amber it was written on. We're good to go.
Speaker 3:So let's talk about the incident, Christine. Any comments?
Speaker 7:So I just want to be clear from the outset that InGen and Ms Rani Global are facing massive potential exposure, regardless of the procedures used to pursue recovery. But this question asks whether the procedural device of a class action is an available means for large numbers of injured people to seek recovery, for large numbers of injured people to seek recovery. So a class action is a lawsuit that's been brought by one or more plaintiffs on behalf of a larger group. But it's not always going to be appropriate to certify a class just because you have a lot of injured people. The parties seeking certification have to satisfy certain requirements and since state class action procedures can vary, I'm going to use federal law for this discussion.
Speaker 7:So a party seeking to certify a class has to satisfy all of the prerequisites in Rule 23A, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Speaker 7:First, the class has to be so numerous that joinder of all the members is impracticable and, according to the film, the live count on the day of the incident is 22,216. So numerosity is probably not going to be a contested issue. Second, there must be common questions of law or facts. This requires you to look closely at the elements that plaintiffs must prove in order to establish their claims. So to survive as a class claim, the claim has to depend on a common contention, which must be capable of class-wide resolution, meaning that determination of that contention's truth or falsity will resolve an issue that is central to the validity of the claim in one stroke. So, for example, you might try something like did defendants breach a duty of care by failing to evacuate all park visitors sooner upon learning of the asset containing failure? If you went with something like this, the class definition might look something like all visitors present in the park during the time when the Indominus was not secured and herpatic.
Speaker 7:So the decision to concentrate the visitors in one area and not immediately ferry them off the island was one that affected all class members. Even if reasonable minds might differ about whether the company actually did enough to conform to the applicable standard of care, an up or down answer would resolve the issue for the entire class. Next, the claims and defenses of the plaintiff who's going to serve as the class representative, must be typical of the claims and defenses of the class. The test is whether other members have the same or similar injury, whether the action is based on COVID, which is not unique to the named plaintiff, and whether other class members have been injured by the same course of conduct. And here you might start to get a little pushback from defense counsel. Although the slow evacuation is common to all plaintiffs, the extent of their injuries is likely to be different because in the chaotic aftermath of the escape there were some fairly atypical chains of events, such as a park employee getting tossed around by different flying animals, only to be eaten by a misosaurus. So if you had a lot of examples like that, where the injuries really stem from an unusual series of events, it might be harder to find a typical representative. Finally, the person who represents the class has to be able to fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class members. But since we don't know anything about those hypothetical class representatives or their counsel, I'm just going to spot plaintiffs as requirements.
Speaker 7:If the plaintiffs can get past Rule 23, they still have to satisfy at least one of the subdivisions of Rule 23. So class actions for damages typically proceed under 23b3, which means the party seeking certification has to show not just that there are common issues but that common questions of law or fact predominate. And the reason is that when common issues predominate, a class action is likely to save time, effort and expense compared to individual lawsuits. But if they don't, a class action probably wouldn't be that much more efficient.
Speaker 7:An individual question is going to be one where the evidence is going to be different from class member to class member, whereas a common question is going to be one that can be resolved based on generalized class-wide proof. So the predominance inquiry asks whether the common issues are more prevalent or more important than the individual issues. So this is often where the fight is and where it's probably likely to be. Here there's plenty of theories we all can imagine, many of which have been named here, under which InGen Mizrani Corporation or their employees or vendors might possibly be liable to individual plaintiffs, but defendants are going to want to argue there are too many individualized issues for these theories. So for the negligence theories, they're going to argue there's too many individualized offenses, right? What about people who contribute to their injuries through their own negligence, like failing to heed warning signs or deliberately antagonizing the dinosaurs, or failing to heed evacuation notices?
Speaker 5:They're also going to want to argue intervening causes.
Speaker 7:What about people whose injuries have been caused by subsequent unpredictable actions of another park goer? And they're also going to want to say that individualized damage calculations are going to prove overwhelming. With such disparate injuries, it will be hard to come up with a way to measure damages that would apply to all 22,216 people. So council for plaintiffs really needs to think hard about whether it's worth it to invest a whole lot of money in trying to certify a class if the evidence is such that this motion for certification would probably be defensible. And if they decide it's not worth the risk.
Speaker 7:There's still other ways they can try to gain efficiencies. They could move under the Multi-District Litigation Act for a transfer of all of the civil actions that are pending in different courts to a single district for consolidated or coordinated pretrial proceedings. If there's common questions with facts, then the transfer would be convenient and promote judicial efficiency. On the flip side, if defense counsel is really taking a hard look at the company's future and decides this ship is going down no matter what we do, they might want to explore whether they can use the bankruptcy procedures to resolve any of these claims, clear up these debts and salvage what they can of the company. Although there's been some debate about the extent to which mass personal injury claims can or should be resolved through the bankruptcy mechanism, One thing the district court can clearly do is that, in its discretion, it could at least order that all these cases have to be tried in the same district. So, in the end, though, no matter what procedures are used, these are going to be some rough days ahead for these companies.
Speaker 3:All right. Due to time, I want all the panelists to kick into gear like they're being chased by a T-Rex. So, michelle, hey, jurassic Park has signs. Is that adequate? The answer is probably not. While helpful, the idea of like, hey, I put up a sign to wear the T-Rex, that's only going to get so far. I mean, that's a sympathetic plaintiff if someone's eaten by a bat is being violent or a dinosaur.
Speaker 5:So, helpful but not enough.
Speaker 3:They'll have the signs up, but they're still going to need a completely different judgment. Judge Beckerman, can you tase dinosaurs?
Speaker 6:Josh, let me ask our jury Raise your hand if you believe it is illegal to tase a T-Rex. All right. So raise your hand if you think it is legal to tase a T-Rex.
Speaker 3:Who doesn't want to be dinner?
Speaker 6:Okay, Well, you know, we all spent a small fortune on law school to learn that it depends, of course, and I think what's in your heads is that of course it's okay if it's in self-defense. So if a T-Rex were to return to San Diego and we found the T-Rex outside the convention center, if we had a reasonable belief that the T-Rex posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, it would be entitled to self-defense, and that's well settled. And so that self-defense applies unless you either provoke or intentionally attract the dinosaur. So in the original movie, when the employees tased the dinosaur that attacked Joffrey, that was likely valid self-defense. But in rebirth, where they intentionally attracted dinosaurs to retrieve their genetic information, it might be a closer call.
Speaker 6:But what about all of you with ill-behaved dogs like mine who might try the shock collar or the shock fence in your yard? Is that legal? Have you asked yourself that question? Generally those tools are legal unless they rise to the level of animal cruelty. Every state has an animal cruelty law and sometimes a shock collar or a similar device can rise to the level of torture. So if you're using them for training, generally not torture. But there is a well-publicized case where moviegoers sued the elephant trainers behind the movie Water for Elephants, and they claimed that they attended the movie thinking that the elephants had been treated humanely and that they were surprised to learn that they had used shock. Coll court dismissed the case. So generally, tasing animals is not a great idea, but in a small voltage it is allowed under the law.
Speaker 6:I want to add one note, and that is that if a species is threatened or endangered, the Endangered Species Act has protected those species at a higher level of criminality for people who take or harass or harm a species that's listed as endangered or threatened. But I will note that today, both the Endangered Species Act as well as the lawyers federal lawyers who enforce it are in danger of extinction. So we may or may not be discussing the Endangered Species Act by the next time.
Speaker 3:Kathy, can you point out that? I'm sworn to the United States, so it depends In the Lost World.
Speaker 8:Ingen brings into the US the cargo ship, two T-Rex, a papa and a baby, and specifically they bring it into downtown San Diego. We'll get into that in a moment. So is that legal? Well, as Stacy mentioned, a species act might be applicable here.
Speaker 8:And specifically, section 9A of the Endangered Species Act says that, among other things, it is unlawful to import into or export any such endangered species into the US or take them on the high seas, which they do. They do, but dinosaurs are not on the endangered species list. Duh, they're at Stanford. But what if they were resurrected? And actually the news we've seen recently that there have been attempts to resurrect the holy man, that they apparently resurrected a dire wolf. I don't know, but if they were resurrected, it is possible that they could be categorized as endangered species and potentially protected by the Endangered Species Act. But technology always outpieces the law, so it would probably take some time to do that.
Speaker 8:But how do you rank? We're in San Diego, home of the world-famous San Diego Zoo. How do they rank animals in? Well, there's a lot of paperwork, a lot of regulations and a lot of permits. So what are some of those regulations? Oh, actually, can I go back to the screen? So this is a screenshot from the movie where they bring the animals into the Port of San Diego. The Port of San Diego. You can walk outside and look east. You'll see the port, that and then that was not filmed here, but you have to look at and there's a lot of different agencies.
Speaker 8:Maybe we'll see what happens in the next few years that regulate the different have different regulations about what you can bring into the US, and so I first looked at the USDA sorry, and they have a lot of regulations about turtles and terrapins and things like that. Obviously, there's not going to be regulations addressing dinosaurs, but according to my go-to dinosaur expert, dino Dan from Nick Jr, dinosaurs are actually more closely related to birds, and so there are a ton of regulations about bringing birds to the US, and it has to do with how many you're bringing in. Are they going to be pets or are they going to be poultry? And so there's a lot of different things that you have to look at. So InGen would have had to file all kinds of paperwork to get permits to even bring these in, and there's no indication they did that in the movie, and in fact it seems like they did that sort breaks out of the cargo ship and rampages through not-in-San Diego, but there's also because we're in San Diego.
Speaker 8:I wanted to look at some local regulations as well, and so the municipal code here says that no person shall bring into or maintain, and it goes through a bunch of things that you can't bring in but wild animals. So I would say that dinosaurs would fall under that, but there are some exceptions. So the first exception is for a legally operated zoo or circus. I think it's arguable whether or not this park that they're creating in San Diego would be legally operated, since nobody knew about it. They didn't get the proper permit to begin with to even build it. And the second exception is service animals.
Speaker 2:My emotional support to you.
Speaker 8:I don't know about you but I don't think dinosaurs are service animals and, in fact, under the ADA, the only types of animals that can qualify as service animals are dogs and miniature horses, so I don't think any of these exceptions would apply as well. So I don't think they follow the proper procedures to break these animals, these dinosaurs' inches in the air, Stephen.
Speaker 3:Mr DNA is on the slide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just really briefly. I know we're kind of here at the end, but this is all we've been talking about here is de-extinction that's an actual term of like the scientific effort to bring animals that have gone extinct back to life. And legal scholars are already thinking about the legal frameworks that could or should apply to de-extincted creatures. And we've already talked a little about personal injury and the complexities about causation and who would be responsible exactly. The Endangered Species Act we've talked about a little bit, although that's a little nuanced, because never before has the ESA been applied to animals that have been created by humans. So, for example, I think of glowfish, like that are the little clownfish that have the glowing DNA from jellyfish. If those escaped into the natural habitat, we wouldn't think of those as an endangered species just because there's small numbers of them. So that's a weirdly complex question too.
Speaker 2:The National Environmental Policy Act has complexities because dinosaurs are going to be both an invasive species because they don't exist in any ecosystem, so they're going to like knock out other species from the ecosystem's biodiversity, but they're also maybe endangered and the law treats those things really differently. So that's really difficult to pin down. And then genetically modified organisms. The regulation of them is all over the place. So we've been talking so much about whether laws could apply to the dinosaurs. Maybe we should talk about whether they should. That's the upshot here. So I'm a lot of Bowdoin. Whether they should, that's the upshot here.
Speaker 3:So I do a lot of boating and I didn't want to scrim during the Jurassic Park rebirth a lot. But one of the issues from following Kingdom is you have a cargo ship go from Costa Rica to Humboldt County, california, in the span of 24 hours. That's not possible. That's over 4,000 miles and to do that in 24 hours would mean that the ship is traveling in about 181.5 miles per hour, which is like 157 knots. The average speed of a cargo ship is 24 knots. That trip should take 179 days, so that's a long time to be a stowaway with dinosaurs. So I'm cool with owning dinosaurs, but not shipping being abused by like that. So just remember that we're all planes away and we want to thank you all for your time. We're like at one minute, so like there's a little time for questions, but you guys in the back are high-fiving because lawyers are full time.
Speaker 3:But you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter and TikTok at the legal gates. We're going to start blogging more and thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference.
