| You can read the first article. https://archive.is/txCN0 A summer camp run by the city government left a group of 9 teenagers "unsupervised" next to a lake. I feel safe in saying that a lake cannot constitute a public nuisance. DJ McCutcheon, one of those teenagers, "was underwater for about six minutes before bystanders rescued him" [after which he subsequently died], strongly suggesting that he was unsupervised in only the most technical sense. I would have to agree with WalterBright that Steilacoom didn't do anything unreasonable here. The idea that 13-year-olds can't be trusted not to kill themselves if left - not even alone, but away from an adult who is officially responsible for keeping them alive - for six minutes,† is completely absurd. The legal trouble appears to have arisen mostly from the fact that leaving the group of teens "unsupervised" violated a formal written policy of the camp, not from the non-fact that it involved some kind of wrongdoing or recklessness. † They were left for much longer than six minutes, but since 100% of the problem occurred within a six-minute window, a standard that aimed to solve the problem would require smaller periods of "unsupervision" than that. |