Theme Park Lawsuit Faults Disney Monorail Manager For Employee Death

Local media is shedding more light on claims being made by the family of a young monorail operator in its wrongful death lawsuit against Walt Disney World.  21-year old Austin Wuennenberg was killed when the monorail he was driving was rear-ended by another Disney monorail that was backing up.  Apparently, Disney's lawyers have already admitted that a monorail maintenance worker had failed to flip a track switch, and this failure caused both trains to be on the same track.  Further, it appears that deposition testimony has established that the monorail trains came equipped with crash avoidance mechanisms, but that the drivers had been instructed by management to turn them off as they trains were being moved throughout the system.

From my view, the most telling and damaging allegations surround the fact that the monorail operations manager was supposed to be on the premises that night -- but instead was off of Disney property eating at a restaurant.  The Wuennenberg family has alleged that, had the manager been in the central operations tower as he was supposed to be, he could have seen the two cars both through the windows and on closed circuit television, and could have radioed the drivers to stop their trains, or simply pressed a "power off" button.

It will be interesting to see how this case progresses.  All of the Central Florida theme parks have reputations for vigorously and aggressively defending personal injury and wrongful death claims.  However in this monorail case, the evidence seems to be overwhelmingly stacked against Walt Disney World.  I wonder if any effort has been made by Disney's lawyers to explore the possibility of a settlement.  I wouldn't think that this would be the kind of case that any theme park would want to go to trial.

What do you think?