July 29, 2025 • 51 mins
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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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my name is Joshua Gilliland, one of the
founding attorneys of the LegalGeeks.
The following was recorded atSan Diego Comic-Con on July 24th
2025.
It is our Jurassic ParkLiability for Dinosaur Attacks
Never Goes Extinct panel.
We had so much fun putting thispanel together and a great time
at Comic-Con.
I hope you enjoy the recording.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We'll do some introductions right now while
we're waiting.
First up, Magistrate JudgeStacey Beckerman from Portland.
Thank you, Judge.
Well, we're proud of MagistrateJudge Stan Bloomfans.
Unfortunately, his flightcanceled and he's unable to be
here.
A little chaos theory thathappened, but all plans away and
(00:44):
we're going to be okay.
We also have Kathy Steiner fromthe CBC, kristen Stephen,
michael, so should I know myfirst, first day of high school
(01:06):
today.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
It's just like you know, Josh always says well,
Mike knows where all the bodiesare buried, which isn't true at
all.
There's only one body, so we'regetting there, but that's like
from 1998?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, and it's a long time ago and far away in
Sacramento.
So let's begin.
Alright, we are here to talkabout Jurassic Park, we'll hit
on Jurassic World, we'll talkabout Camp Cretaceous.
We won't really get into thechaos theory, but stay tuned for
(01:39):
that.
And this is lots of greatanimation for the rest of the
party as well.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
So for the panelists what is your favorite species of
dinosaur?
I'm an Ankylosaurus kind of guy.
A little throwback to me comingas Dr Hammond, the older person
in the script.
It's like a giant armadillo Iguess you still see walking
(02:05):
around today.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
so I'm kind of fond of that one, the velociraptor.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Velociraptor because they're clever yeah, I always
liked the triceratops.
They just seemed like kind ofgentle giants, like kind of
fearsome but cool just cool.
Speaker 7 (02:22):
So I don't have a favorite species.
But as for individual dinosaurs, it's a tie between Bumpy and
Cindy.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Kathy, uh, dinosaurs.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh, Triceratops for me.
So there's no wrong answer,unless you pick something that's
not a dinosaur.
Alright, so let's talk aboutwrongful death at Jurassic Park.
The first movie is a wrongfuldeath case.
You have an employee get beaten.
(02:57):
Just imagine being a partnercounsel.
That would be an unpleasantafternoon.
I'm not sure what it's like fora lawyer for a zoo, but that
would be concerning.
Now there are lots of jets thathappen in the first movie and
the comedy movies, but justfocusing on the first film, we
(03:19):
have our corporate spy whotypically has issues of
contributory negligence.
The horror story of that poorlawyer just doing his job and
killed like that, that's the sinof the movie.
He was the true hero and he wasmurdered by a T-Rex.
(03:41):
Now I just don't know if therecould be comparative negligence,
but I think it's the kids withthe flashlight or the signal of
the T-Rex.
If those meddling children hadbeen coming out of the
flashlight we wouldn't have amovie, it would have just been
really slow.
We have Sam Jackson dying inHulk again, which is a motif
(04:02):
with his movie characters.
Lucy Minnelli is also a motifand he theoretically just
assumed the risk of going out,knowing that there were molester
actors running around.
Now you have the Doctor who lookat the other movies in the
animated series.
It's like is there a good guyor a bad guy?
(04:29):
It's really hard to tell, butit's Steve.
Lund who's responsible for allthis?
And at the end of the day, it'slike you're working at a place
where dinosaurs have to eatpeople.
There's going to be someassumption of this, but this
raises the issue.
Speaker 8 (04:42):
Kathy can you patent on this or do you have any?
So in the sequel to JurassicPark, the Lost World, peter
Ludlow, who is the new CEO ofInGen, he makes a statement.
He says an extinct animal thatthey brought back to life has no
rights and exists because wemade it, we patented it, we own
(05:02):
it.
In the original movie, if we goto the next slide, in the
original movie they explain howthey brought the dinosaurs back
and what they did was they wereable to create the dinosaurs by
using DNA technology.
They sequenced DNA that theyobtained from blood in a
preserved mosquito and then usedfrog DNA to fill in the gaps in
(05:27):
the DNA sequence.
And then what happens?
So the next slide after that?
Sorry, two slides, and theseare all screenshots from the
tutorial that they show in themovie that explains how they
created the dinosaurs, and I seewe have a Mr DNA right there
that I'm going to name.
We did not plan that, but theUS Supreme Court has actually
(05:55):
commented on the issue ofwhether or not you can patent
naturally occurring things, andin 1980, in a case called Dino
versus Chocolate Body they saidthat a person who invents or
discovers any new usefulmanufacture or composition of
matter can patent it.
Sorry, I can't read my notes,and so in that case there was a
(06:16):
man by the name of Chakrabadi Idon't think I'm pronouncing that
correctly.
He sought a patent for ahuman-made genetically
engineered bacterium that couldbreak down crude oil to help
clean up oil spills, and thecourt said that that was
patentable because it wassomething that was not naturally
occurring.
He created it so he couldpatent it even though the
(06:39):
organism itself wasquote-unquote natural.
And then we get to 2013.
In another case, the SupremeCourt rule.
The case is association ofmolecular pathology versus
myriad genetics, and in thatcase you have myriad genetics
who sequence the BRCA1 and BRCA2genes, and for those of you
(07:01):
that don't know what that is,it's a very important gene to
women, because if there aremutations in that gene, that
indicates that you have a higherlikelihood for breast cancer.
And so Myriad Geneticssequenced the gene and then they
invented some diagnostic toolsto determine if there were
mutations in the gene and theytried to patent it, and the
(07:23):
court said they were not allowedto patent it because the
sequence itself was a naturallyoccurring gene.
So what we have to ask in thissituation is whether or not the
DNA sequence, if we can go tothe slide with the DNA sequence
oh, we're on that one, sorrythat one.
So.
Is this DNA sequence?
(07:43):
Oh, we're on that one, sorrythat one.
So is this DNA sequencenaturally occurring?
And you have to remember theygot it from dinosaur blood and
then they put in frog DNA.
So who thinks that's naturallyoccurring you see a couple hands
out there and who thinks thatis man-made?
So the court hasn't ruled onthis, but I think the rest of
(08:05):
you, I think I would make theargument that it was man-made,
because putting together thosetwo things isn't naturally
occurring, because I don't thinka dinosaur and a frog have made
it yet.
And the other thing I wanted topoint out too, to add to my
argument, is all right, anybio-majors out there.
(08:26):
I was a bio-ma major.
I know she's my sister, allright, who knows what is a
different or unusual about thisDNA 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 Biomajors.
Is B a naturally occurring DNA?
I see a lot of head shaking.
No, that's correct.
(08:47):
So it's not what we were taughtwhen I was a bio major.
So you have A, c, t and G areyour nucleotides, for DNA B is
not a naturally occurring one,but according to Google, b can
stand for complementary DNA orcDNA, which is actually a
man-made sequence.
So if we think the graphicdesigners for this movie were
(09:10):
bio majors, they might haveactually Indicated to us that
this was not naturally occurring, with a man-made and therefore
practical.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
But maybe they just made a mistake.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Thank you, andy, for the ring captains, but we're
trying to find a place that'sgreat for the panelists.
Leave them on the mics, please.
So, michael, let's talk aboutcausation.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Does causation exist in the air?
Well, first I'd like to welcomeeverybody to Jury Do tonight.
The issue of causation is ajury question.
You get called for jury dutyand it's not a criminal case.
Most likely you're going to behaving to decide did what the
defendant do cause the injury?
(09:58):
And we're going to focus onactual and possible cause,
because that's what has to bethrough.
We're going to point the onefinger tonight about who had a
duty to do what and what's thatduty to reach.
But causation is what comesdown to.
First you have actual causation.
This is referred to as but-for.
You're asking Mike, what is abut-for?
I tell you it is to poop with.
(10:19):
Thank you, and this will be mylast time around where we go to
that.
But for causation is what a lotof people refer to as the
butterfly effect.
You say, well, but for thishappening?
But for a harness, you wouldn'thave fallen into the raptor bin
.
But for the raptor bin beingelectronic instead of
(10:43):
hand-cranked, you wouldn't havefallen in.
But for the designer designingfor Raptors, he wouldn't have
done it.
You go back until you get tothat butterfly in Africa that
flapped its wings.
So the courts have done it andsaid at some point we have to
cut that off, and what they dois they cut it off with
foreseeability, and that's wherewe get to proximate comics, and
the trouble I have when Idecided to tackle this is that
(11:03):
I'm at Comic-Con, whereeverybody in this room thinks
everything is foreseeable.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
They're like well, maybe not in this verse but on
verse five.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
this is what's happening and you've got to
believe I'm not going to leaveComic-Con without talking about
something super.
So we have intervening andsuperseding causation.
Rarely is it just plaintiff anddefendant.
There's usually somebody elseinvolved in it and the question
is that other person'sparticipation was an interceding
cause that just contributes toit, or was it a superseding
(11:34):
cause, meaning it cuts offliability, and the example
normally used is the caraccident where defendant hits
the victim.
Victim ends up going to thehospital and the doctor commits
malpractice.
The defendant says and thedoctor commits malpractice.
The defendant says hey, thatdoctor'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 foreverything.
(11:55):
You're the proximate cause.
I think it's kind of unfair todoctors to say that your
malpractice is foreseeable.
Therefore, what you do, we'regonna hold that other guy
accountable for it.
So I was hoping someone wouldcome as dogs in and I could
point at them, but Everyone.
(12:16):
If you're a police attorney,you wanna point as many people
as possible so you have as manypockets 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'sactually gonna help you through.
So you're my jury and, becauseit's your question, the judges
on the panel can't give adecision on this.
They decide stuff about dutyand breach.
(12:37):
All right let's throw somescenarios at you.
So we have, on the next slide,the Estates of McDougal.
Is going to claim Nedry, youare the actual approximate cause
.
Nedry, of course, is going toargue 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 offthe power to everything.
(12:58):
I actually kept the security onto the Raptors.
It was Hammond who decided toturn off everything and that's
how the Raptors escaped.
He's the actual causation.
And besides, it's foreseeablethat on this island where a
hurricane's coming, the powermight go out no backup generator
kind of thing.
(13:19):
So could he get off?
Probably not, because there's atiming issue and that Nedry's
actions occurred before Hammondturned it off.
So he can't really claim well,somebody else did it first.
And the same thing comes whenthe engine tries to do a defense
of well, somebody else did itfirst.
And the same thing comes whenthe engine tries to do a defense
of well, nedry did everything,nedry did it before.
So more than likely it's not asupersede uniform, but it is
(13:43):
contributory towards it.
So that's something after thispanel you'll have to, you know,
if you want to decide later anddebate about it with your fellow
Comic-Conners For each personthat died in this, who actually
caused it?
Who was the proximate cause,and was that something that
could cut off the chain ofliability?
And if you think of one thingInjun warned everybody before
(14:07):
anybody died.
If I was going to address thejury, ladies and gentlemen of
the jury, you were warned tocover your butts.
Did anybody cover their butts.
No, they are all responsible,contributory negligence.
They should be off the hook.
And Josh touched on thisearlier Did Dr Malcolm actually
(14:30):
killed our beloved attorney?
He was the one that decided tostep in, pick the flares out and
lead them towards the outhouse.
As we all know, apparentlyT-Rexes can't see unless it's
moving.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
Although the thing has a nose the size of a
Volkswagen.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
it'll disappear if you're not moving.
He's the one that threw it.
He's the one that led to theouthouse being knocked over.
That caused our belovedattorney to move and that's what
led to it.
Dr Malcolm caused the death ofour attorney, not him.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
We got a jury instruction for that.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
This is actually a real one.
That's written in the jury.
If you're in an emergencysituation, you're not held to
the same standard as somebodythat's right in the jury.
If you're in an emergencysituation, you're not held to
the same standard as somebodythat's trying to reflect on the
proper course of action.
So Dr Malcolm does have thedefense of.
I was in an emergency situation.
There's a T-Rex.
I did what I thought was rightin this situation, although
maybe I should have thrown theflares onto the other side of
(15:31):
the road, where somebody was nottrying to hide.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Judge Buckerhead, can you assure Jurassic Park?
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Sure, good evening geeks.
Obviously, liability insuranceis important for any business
that's offering an inherentlydangerous activity, and it's
generally available forbusinesses like zoos or
amusement parks, or maybe abetter analogy is like a shark
cave diving or something.
But the problem is it'sexpensive, of course.
(16:04):
So a lot of companies thatoffer dangerous activities, so
like Disney, for example, isself insured.
The only potential limitationfor Jurassic Park being insured
is you can't insure illegalactivities.
That's seen as bad policybecause you are promoting crimes
and so you could not.
Jurassic Park likely could notget coverage for any
(16:25):
unauthorized dinosaur cloning orillegal tours like the Dinosaur
.
But what if John Hammondshopped around and tried to get
liability coverage for JurassicPark and nobody would insure
Jurassic Park?
Could the government step in orcould courts step in and force
insurance companies to insureJurassic Park?
And the short answer is no.
(16:46):
Generally, neither governmentsnor courts can force an
insurance company to enter intoa contract with a party, and so
states of course try toencourage insurance companies to
offer coverage, much likeCalifornia is doing now with
respect to offering incentivesto insurers to provide
homeowners policy in high-riskfire areas.
(17:09):
But, of course, if insurancecompanies do offer a policy and
offer worry-free liabilityinsurance for Jurassic Park, and
then they were to refuse to payfor any harm caused.
That's covered by the policy.
That's when the courts step inand force the insurance company
to pay, and that happens all thetime.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
So what could possibly?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
go wrong.
What could possibly go wrong,Christine?
Let's talk about disloyalemployees.
Speaker 7 (17:39):
Sure, there seems to be a pattern of betrayal in
these films and it ofteninvolves a company's workers not
just turning on it but stealingvaluable company assets.
And for the sake of expediencehere I'm just going to assume
(18:00):
that US apply and thatjurisdiction venue are proper in
the US courts.
So let's go over the elementsthat either InGen or BioSyn
respectively would need to showto establish a civil claim for
breach of the duty of loyalty.
The first is a relationshipgiving rise to the duty of
loyalty.
The California state arelationship giving rise to the
duty of loyalty.
The California state.
Courts generally hold that anemployer-employee relationship
is sufficient.
So as to Ramsey Cole, it seemsreasonably clear that he's an
(18:24):
employee.
He's described ascommunications or head of
communications for Biosyn.
As to Ian Malcolm, a little bitless clear, but Sattler
describes him as Biosyn'sin-house philosopher and at one
point Dodgson purports to firehim.
So maybe he is hired as anemployee.
And then you have Dennis Nedry.
(18:44):
The source material gives somepretty strong hints that he's
probably meant to be anindependent contractor.
He refers to bidding for thejob and another character refers
to Nedry's people in Cambridge.
So he appears to be affiliatedwith a separate company.
But even assuming that he is anindependent contractor, that
doesn't necessarily get him outof trouble.
He might still owe a fiduciaryduty of loyalty if he also
(19:06):
qualifies as an agent of InGen.
So an agent is someone whorepresents another in dealing
with third parties.
So just briefly, the test is ifNedry had been authorized by
InGen to deal with third partieson its behalf and setting up
the computer system, ingen stillretained the right to control
Nedry's activities.
He might be in anagent-principal relationship.
(19:27):
Those are more examples of thefactual questions that Michael
referenced that are likely to bedisputed and you might need a
jury to decide them.
So the second thing you need isthe person who owes a duty must
have knowingly acted againstthe employer's interests or
knowingly acted on behalf of aparty whose interests were
adverse to the employer.
(19:47):
So for Nedry, he's being paidto steal valuable dinosaur
embryos the personal property ofInGen and deliver them to
Biosyn, ingen's competitor.
He also creates a massivesafety risk which ultimately
leads to property damage,physical injury and death when
he fiddles with the computer andsecurity systems.
To try to cover up hiswrongdoing wrongdoing For
(20:16):
Malcolm he discloses to Sattlerthat the locusts are part of a
larger project called Hexapod.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Allies tells her, where to find the lab.
Speaker 7 (20:19):
Gives her a device that will allow her physical
access to the restricted lab sothey can steal a locust DNA
sample.
And finally, as to Ramsey, hepoints out the location of the
elevators to the sub-levels thatrequire special clearance and
gives Grant and Sattler 30minutes alone, knowing and
expecting that they will steal a.
DNA sample.
All of this is either againstInGen's or Biosense's interest,
(20:43):
respectively, and then, finally,there must be damages
approximately caused by thebreach.
Yes, moving on.
So the factual wrinkle ofinterest here is the nature of
the property being stolen,specifically the live embryos
and DNA samples.
The physical embodiment ofthose things likely carries
(21:05):
valuable information about InGenand Biosense research that
they've invested a lot of timeand effort into developing.
However, to the extent that theduty of loyalty claim is based
on misappropriation ofconfidential information, the
company is going to have to lookat whether the trade secret law
might supersede the duty ofloyalty claim.
So, for example, the CaliforniaTrade Secret Misappropriation
(21:27):
Act is a statute that allowsrecovery of damages for injury
caused by the misappropriationof trade secrets, but it's the
exclusive remedy for conductthat falls within its terms, and
many courts have interpretedCAATSA to broadly supersede
claims based on misappropriationof any information that's
claimed to be confidential, evenif it doesn't actually meet the
definition of a trade secret.
(21:47):
So if the genetic informationthat's contained within the
embryos and the DNA samples is atrade secret or otherwise is
confidential information, thisaspect of Nedry's and Malcolm's
and Cole's wrongdoing wouldlikely have to be addressed
under trade secret law or someother theory that is not
superseded.
So for Dennis however, there maystill be a way to allege a duty
(22:09):
of loyalty claim based on allof the other ways that he has
acted against InGen's interests.
Of loyalty claim based on allof the other ways that he has
acted against Injin's interests,namely being deceptive and
enabling a major security breachthat endangers the physical
safety of everyone on the island, including himself.
Finally, you might ask, aren'tCole and Malcolm just doing
their civic duty by disclosingBiosyn's wrongdoing?
(22:30):
And it is true that there arevarious state and federal laws
that protect whistleblowers fromretaliation by their employers
for disclosing what theyreasonably believe to be
violations of the law in variouscontexts that doesn't mean,
however, that they canfacilitate the theft of locust
DNA samples, although thefederal law does provide a
narrow, limited immunity fordisclosures to government
(22:51):
officials or attorneys solelyfor the purpose of recording or
investigating a suspectedviolation of the law.
So, ultimately, the takeawayhere is that so you and a
scientist have the right ideayou should nurture loyalty and
treat your workers well.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
So, I think it's a good idea to have lions and wild
lions running for payment.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Just so you know we're talking about this panel.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
People are like oh, that sounds silly, that sounds
stupid.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
This is Irvine, california, about an hour and a
half north of here.
I grew up in the town rightnext door.
This is a real place where youcan drive your own little lions.
If you look closely at thepicture you see you've got
somebody not driving their ownlane.
You have a window open the ladyto pet the lions.
More than likely it could havebeen me in the back of that
station wagon without a seatbeltand the driver was probably
(23:43):
smoking.
My parents actually gotwarnings about be on the lookout
for an escaped hippo.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
That happened twice.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
They eventually got shut down because the lions and
elephants were escaping andmauling people and guests.
So, yep, these are issues thatactually have real-life
representation.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I will add watch the documentary Ward about making a
movie and it's a ticket from theBirds, her husband, they had 70
lions and they were trying tomake this movie.
Over 100 people got bit bylions and tigers.
(24:24):
It's insane to watch.
It's on Peacock.
Enjoy your Friday night.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
And, by the way, life is Just For.
Ice is still available in.
Florida.
If anybody wants to go, allright, we have to stick up for
our own here.
If you look at that quote it'squoted all the time from
Shakespeare, and it's probablythe highest compliment you could
actually give to an attorney.
What it says is if we want tostart a rebellion, we want to
(24:52):
overthrow the powers that be andinstall chaos and get rid of
civilization, the first thing wehave to do is get rid of the
guardians of the law, thegatekeepers that keep us
civilized peoples in place, andthat is attorneys, so it's kind
of a high compliment if thefirst named character that gets
killed off is the blood-suckingattorney Ferreira so that
(25:15):
compliment immediately getstaken away.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
There's a couple of memorable ones in the movie.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
When you first see the dinosaurs welcome to
Jurassic Park the tremblingglass of water and then, yeah,
the attorney getting eaten onthe outhouse.
Thanks Spielberg for that.
And if you must know, the nextslide there is an exclusive SPCD
(25:41):
toy from 2022 is Outhouse Chaos.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
You two can reenact the famous scene where the
attorney is in the outhousegetting beaten.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Your children can play with it.
You can do it, so I thought itwas my, my duty to stick up for
attorneys in this case and seewhat's he really still back.
And because we're talking aboutan outhouse, I'm gonna talk
about duty my second food joke.
Thank you on it.
There's a lot of duties thatare involved with this attorney.
That's what I'm not going totalk about.
(26:10):
Was he denied a rest break onit?
There's a lot of duties that areinvolved with this attorney I'm
not going to talk about was hedenied a?
Rest break because he was onhis break, apparently, when the
TRX ate him.
I'm not going to talk about hisduty of confidence to his
actual clients when he sayswe're going to make so much
money, it's like what do youmean?
We, they hired you.
They're going to make a lot ofmoney.
(26:31):
What I'm really, really gonnafocus on is this duty of
confidence?
this is the first time anybody'sever inspected a Safari for the
dinosaurs.
And when you don't have theknowledge as an attorney, you're
either supposed to find anattorney that does, associate
attorney with that does, or gainthe knowledge, and that's what
(26:52):
most attorneys do.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
They don't want to turn away cases.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
In this case, he has to become knowledgeable, and
what we do is attorneys is hireexperts.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So that's what.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Jura was supposed to do when he's coming to inspect
it.
There's a similar team so hecan get the knowledge to inform.
If this part is safe, hebron'sa rock star that's what he gets
in plain of.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
He gets one person and he's a chaos star.
That's what he gets in plain of.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
He gets one person and he's a chaos fetishian.
And I looked into chaos theoryand we're back to the butterfly
effect and his basic role issaying we can't predict anything
over a long period of timebecause there's too many
variables.
That's what chaos theory goesafter.
Hey, you're not hopeful at all.
Bring in Dr Grant, who spendsthe whole movie going Wow, they
run in herds.
Wow, they're not actuallycold-blooded, wow, look at this
(27:37):
the most beneficial thing, hesays, is Humans and dinosaurs
have been separated for millionsof years.
We have no idea who it's thatYou're useless too.
Then we have Dr Sadler apaleobiologist.
A botanist.
What's the botanist going totell you about the safety of
dinosaurs and keeping yourguests safe, or how to run an
amusement park?
I love her character.
I think she's the most kick-asscharacter in the movie.
(28:00):
She puts Hammond in his placeabout sexism, about who's going
to go rescue somebody.
She's awesome.
She doesn't know how to run anamusement park.
She does not know how to run asafari or a campground.
So yeah, I can't convince DrMalcolm who Steven served me he
was going to possibly ask, so Ididn't.
I can convince Dr Hammond.
(28:20):
Instead I can do a couple morebuttons over the course of the
panel.
So the only person who has anyexperience is McDoug, who came
over from the game park inAfrica and his advice is put the
raptors down.
His other solution was let'sengage the lysine effect so all
(28:41):
the dinosaurs will know Koma anddie.
Nobody listens to him.
So I would argue that, in spiteof how I want to stick up for
Gerard, he fails to do it inconfidence because he did not
get the knowledge necessary toactually fight.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Fun fact, my brother named his son Ian.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Now.
I'm going to assume we're inCalifornia and the other big
issue people have with ourbeloved attorney is when things
get tough.
When you have to go.
You have to go.
According to the othercharacters, he went running off
and abandoned the children.
So did he have an actual dutyto protect these kids?
California, you have generallyno duty to protect somebody else
(29:24):
.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
There is an exception , and that's if you have a
special relationship.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
And I think the law is kind of creepy and says you
have a special relationship toprotect a child, and I'm like
special relationship to a child,Gross.
But it's when you're in a sortof custodial capacity and the
child is looking to you fortheir safety and care.
You can voluntarily undertakethis.
So that's kind of the questionis, did he have?
(29:51):
Did they look to him for theirprotection?
And it's quite obvious they did.
They kept saying over and overagain in panicked voices he left
us.
He left us.
Of course, his version is theywanted to sit with Dr Grant.
I don't know how they ended upin my car to begin with, and
they the parents.
I'm not a teacher, I'm not acoach.
The parents entrusted them totheir grandfather for their
(30:11):
safety, not me.
I'm not a teacher, I'm not acoach.
The parents entrusted them totheir grandfather for their
safety, not me.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
If I was prosecuting, I would definitely say he
voluntarily did it.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
When he told him to put back, or told Timmy to put
back, the night vision gogglesthat are expensive, he asserted
himself into the role of theauthority figure and an adult
and that's when he took on thecustodial relationship and he
was responsible for protectingthose kids, Naturally he would
have been worthless.
You saw that T-Rex comesthrough the sunroof of the Jeep.
Those kids held back with theirlittle arms that T-Rex.
(30:42):
They wouldn't have beenprotecting him.
And then when the car justsquished Timmy was safe.
Timmy's small Graham would havebeen crushed by that car.
He wouldn't have used it, buthe still had that I believe he
still had that to be protected.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Or he could have said put the flashlight down.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
On it and just to leave you.
You can't spell, indeed,without engine.
I believe they're probablylooking for a new current
council.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
So inquire with him.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
All right, Stephen, let's talk about Camp Cretaceous
.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
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 placeconcurrently with the 2015
Jurassic World film.
So while Claire and Owen arefighting off the Indominus Rex,
so are these six teenagers,except without weapons, without
adults and without shoes, withtraction.
(31:40):
So there and when the islandgets evacuated at the end of the
film, the children are leftbehind to their own devices on
the island, and then ensuesseven seasons of them versus
dinosaurs.
So can the parents or thechildren sue Jurassic Park for
their injuries?
It's pretty obvious that, yes,there's negligence the breach of
(32:01):
duty to care for these children.
Negligent infliction ofemotional distress for watching
your friends be almost eaten bydinosaurs.
Breach of contract, because theparents think they're sending
their kids to a fun summer campwhen in fact it's like a
dinosaur-themed Hunger Games.
There's oh, I don't know ifit's a product liability.
If there's strict liability, ifthe dinosaurs are products,
(32:24):
there might be a liability there.
And also false imprisonment,because the children are trapped
on this island, they're notable to go anywhere.
But the real question iswhether the parents are able to
sue if they signed a release ofclaims and liability waiver.
And so for all of us who haveever done anything fun, you know
that you have to sign a releaseof liability to do that thing.
(32:47):
It's a contractual allocationof risk and it's perfectly legal
.
You can say I assume the riskof injury if you let me
participate in your fun thing,and so chances are that parents
of these children signed aliability waiver and courts will
generally enforce them if theyare clear and unambiguous, if
(33:08):
they are specific about therisks that you're going to face,
they don't violate publicpolicy and if you knowingly
signed the waiver.
Now, if I was representing theparents, I would say that this
is not.
Any liability waiver that theysigned is not enforceable.
We can sue because, first ofall, those waivers will only
excuse conduct that is based onnegligence, simple negligence
(33:30):
Someone does an oopsie, you gethurt.
You can assume that risk,that's fine.
But if there's some sort ofgross negligence involved, where
there's reckless disregard forsomeone's safety, or if there's
intentional conduct, then youdon't.
That is not within the scope ofyour release of liability.
And of course I would say thatexposing children to like huge,
(33:51):
building-sized human eatingmachines is grossly negligent.
That is not within the scope oftheir waiver.
And also those that any sort ofrelease might be against public
policy, because the state, thegovernment, has an interest in
protecting children, as we werejust talking about, and so a
court might be inclined toexcuse a waiver of liability if
(34:15):
the children's safety isinvolved.
So if I was representing theparents, I think we'd have a
pretty clear shot.
Any waiver of liability is notworth the amber it was written
on.
We're good to go.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
So let's talk about the incident, Christine.
Any comments?
Speaker 7 (34:34):
So I just want to be clear from the outset that InGen
and Ms Rani Global are facingmassive potential exposure,
regardless of the proceduresused to pursue recovery.
But this question asks whetherthe procedural device of a class
action is an available meansfor large numbers of injured
(34:55):
people to seek recovery, forlarge numbers of injured people
to seek recovery.
So a class action is a lawsuitthat's been brought by one or
more plaintiffs on behalf of alarger group.
But it's not always going to beappropriate to certify a class
just because you have a lot ofinjured people.
The parties seekingcertification have to satisfy
certain requirements and sincestate class action procedures
can vary, I'm going to usefederal law for this discussion.
(35:17):
So a party seeking to certify aclass has to satisfy all of the
prerequisites in Rule 23A, theFederal Rules of Civil Procedure
.
First, the class has to be sonumerous that joinder of all the
members is impracticable and,according to the film, the live
count on the day of the incidentis 22,216.
So numerosity is probably notgoing to be a contested issue.
Second, there must be commonquestions of law or facts.
(35:41):
This requires you to lookclosely at the elements that
plaintiffs must prove in orderto establish their claims.
So to survive as a class claim,the claim has to depend on a
common contention, which must becapable of class-wide
resolution, meaning thatdetermination of that
contention's truth or falsitywill resolve an issue that is
central to the validity of theclaim in one stroke.
(36:01):
So, for example, you might trysomething like did defendants
breach a duty of care by failingto evacuate all park visitors
sooner upon learning of theasset containing failure?
If you went with something likethis, the class definition
might look something like allvisitors present in the park
during the time when theIndominus was not secured and
(36:22):
herpatic.
So the decision to concentratethe visitors in one area and not
immediately ferry them off theisland was one that affected all
class members.
Even if reasonable minds mightdiffer about whether the company
actually did enough to conformto the applicable standard of
care, an up or down answer wouldresolve the issue for the
(36:42):
entire class.
Next, the claims and defensesof the plaintiff who's going to
serve as the classrepresentative, must be typical
of the claims and defenses ofthe class.
The test is whether othermembers have the same or similar
injury, whether the action isbased on COVID, which is not
unique to the named plaintiff,and whether other class members
have been injured by the samecourse of conduct.
(37:02):
And here you might start to geta little pushback from defense
counsel.
Although the slow evacuation iscommon to all plaintiffs, the
extent of their injuries islikely to be different because
in the chaotic aftermath of theescape there were some fairly
atypical chains of events, suchas a park employee getting
(37:23):
tossed around by differentflying animals, only to be eaten
by a misosaurus.
So if you had a lot of exampleslike that, where the injuries
really stem from an unusualseries of events, it might be
harder to find a typicalrepresentative.
Finally, the person whorepresents the class has to be
able to fairly and adequatelyprotect the interests of the
class members.
But since we don't knowanything about those
hypothetical classrepresentatives or their counsel
, I'm just going to spotplaintiffs as requirements.
(37:47):
If the plaintiffs can get pastRule 23, they still have to
satisfy at least one of thesubdivisions of Rule 23.
So class actions for damagestypically proceed under 23b3,
which means the party seekingcertification has to show not
just that there are commonissues but that common questions
of law or fact predominate.
And the reason is that whencommon issues predominate, a
(38:09):
class action is likely to savetime, effort and expense
compared to individual lawsuits.
But if they don't, a classaction probably wouldn't be that
much more efficient.
An individual question is goingto be one where the evidence is
going to be different from classmember to class member, whereas
a common question is going tobe one that can be resolved
based on generalized class-wideproof.
(38:29):
So the predominance inquiryasks whether the common issues
are more prevalent or moreimportant than the individual
issues.
So this is often where thefight is and where it's probably
likely to be.
Here there's plenty of theorieswe all can imagine, many of
which have been named here,under which InGen Mizrani
Corporation or their employeesor vendors might possibly be
(38:51):
liable to individual plaintiffs,but defendants are going to
want to argue there are too manyindividualized issues for these
theories.
So for the negligence theories,they're going to argue there's
too many individualized offenses, right?
What about people whocontribute to their injuries
through their own negligence,like failing to heed warning
signs or deliberatelyantagonizing the dinosaurs, or
failing to heed evacuationnotices?
Speaker 5 (39:13):
They're also going to want to argue intervening
causes.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
What about people whose injuries have been caused
by subsequent unpredictableactions of another park goer?
And they're also going to wantto say that individualized
damage calculations are going toprove overwhelming.
With such disparate injuries,it will be hard to come up with
a way to measure damages thatwould apply to all 22,216 people
(39:35):
.
So council for plaintiffsreally needs to think hard about
whether it's worth it to investa whole lot of money in trying
to certify a class if theevidence is such that this
motion for certification wouldprobably be defensible.
And if they decide it's notworth the risk.
There's still other ways theycan try to gain efficiencies.
They could move under theMulti-District Litigation Act
(39:58):
for a transfer of all of thecivil actions that are pending
in different courts to a singledistrict for consolidated or
coordinated pretrial proceedings.
If there's common questionswith facts, then the transfer
would be convenient and promotejudicial efficiency.
On the flip side, if defensecounsel is really taking a hard
look at the company's future anddecides this ship is going down
no matter what we do, theymight want to explore whether
(40:21):
they can use the bankruptcyprocedures to resolve any of
these claims, clear up thesedebts and salvage what they can
of the company.
Although there's been somedebate about the extent to which
mass personal injury claims canor should be resolved through
the bankruptcy mechanism, Onething the district court can
clearly do is that, in itsdiscretion, it could at least
order that all these cases haveto be tried in the same district
(40:43):
.
So, in the end, though, nomatter what procedures are used,
these are going to be somerough days ahead for these
companies.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
All right.
Due to time, I want all thepanelists to kick into gear like
they're being chased by a T-Rex.
So, michelle, hey, jurassicPark 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 toget so far.
(41:12):
I mean, that's a sympatheticplaintiff if someone's eaten by
a bat is being violent or adinosaur.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
So, helpful but not enough.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
They'll have the signs up, but they're still
going to need a completelydifferent judgment.
Judge Beckerman, can you tasedinosaurs?
Speaker 6 (41:32):
Josh, let me ask our jury Raise your hand if you
believe it is illegal to tase aT-Rex.
All right.
So raise your hand if you thinkit is legal to tase a T-Rex.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Who doesn't want to be dinner?
Speaker 6 (41:47):
Okay, Well, you know, we all spent a small fortune on
law school to learn that itdepends, of course, and I think
what's in your heads is that ofcourse it's okay if it's in
self-defense.
So if a T-Rex were to return toSan Diego and we found the
T-Rex outside the conventioncenter, if we had a reasonable
(42:10):
belief that the T-Rex posed animminent threat of death or
serious bodily injury, it wouldbe entitled to self-defense, and
that's well settled.
And so that self-defenseapplies unless you either
provoke or intentionally attractthe dinosaur.
So in the original movie, whenthe employees tased the dinosaur
(42:32):
that attacked Joffrey, that waslikely valid self-defense.
But in rebirth, where theyintentionally attracted
dinosaurs to retrieve theirgenetic information, it might be
a closer call.
But what about all of you withill-behaved dogs like mine who
might try the shock collar orthe shock fence in your yard?
(42:52):
Is that legal?
Have you asked yourself thatquestion?
Generally those tools are legalunless they rise to the level
of animal cruelty.
Every state has an animalcruelty law and sometimes a
shock collar or a similar devicecan rise to the level of
torture.
So if you're using them fortraining, generally not torture.
But there is a well-publicizedcase where moviegoers sued the
(43:18):
elephant trainers behind themovie Water for Elephants, and
they claimed that they attendedthe movie thinking that the
elephants had been treatedhumanely and that they were
surprised to learn that they hadused shock.
Coll court dismissed the case.
So generally, tasing animals isnot a great idea, but in a
(43:41):
small voltage it is allowedunder the law.
I want to add one note, and thatis that if a species is
threatened or endangered, theEndangered Species Act has
protected those species at ahigher level of criminality for
people who take or harass orharm a species that's listed as
endangered or threatened.
But I will note that today,both the Endangered Species Act
(44:04):
as well as the lawyers federallawyers who enforce it are in
danger of extinction.
So we may or may not bediscussing the Endangered
Species Act by the next time.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Kathy, can you point out that?
I'm sworn to the United States,so it depends In the Lost World
.
Speaker 8 (44:23):
Ingen brings into the US the cargo ship, two T-Rex, a
papa and a baby, andspecifically they bring it into
downtown San Diego.
We'll get into that in a moment.
So is that legal?
Well, as Stacy mentioned, aspecies act might be applicable
here.
And specifically, section 9A ofthe Endangered Species Act says
that, among other things, it isunlawful to import into or
(44:47):
export any such endangeredspecies into the US or take them
on the high seas, which they do.
They do, but dinosaurs are noton the endangered species list.
Duh, they're at Stanford.
But what if they wereresurrected?
And actually the news we'veseen recently that there have
been attempts to resurrect theholy man, that they apparently
(45:08):
resurrected a dire wolf.
I don't know, but if they wereresurrected, it is possible that
they could be categorized asendangered species and
potentially protected by theEndangered Species Act.
But technology always outpiecesthe law, so it would probably
take some time to do that.
But how do you rank?
We're in San Diego, home of theworld-famous San Diego Zoo.
(45:32):
How do they rank animals in?
Well, there's a lot ofpaperwork, a lot of regulations
and a lot of permits.
So what are some of thoseregulations?
Oh, actually, can I go back tothe screen?
So this is a screenshot fromthe movie where they bring the
animals into the Port of SanDiego.
The Port of San Diego.
You can walk outside and lookeast.
(45:54):
You'll see the port, that andthen that was not filmed here,
but you have to look at andthere's a lot of different
agencies.
Maybe we'll see what happens inthe next few years that regulate
the different have differentregulations about what you can
bring into the US, and so Ifirst looked at the USDA sorry,
(46:22):
and they have a lot ofregulations about turtles and
terrapins and things like that.
Obviously, there's not going tobe regulations addressing
dinosaurs, but according to mygo-to dinosaur expert, dino Dan
from Nick Jr, dinosaurs areactually more closely related to
birds, and so there are a tonof regulations about bringing
(46:43):
birds to the US, and it has todo with how many you're bringing
in.
Are they going to be pets orare they going to be poultry?
And so there's a lot ofdifferent things that you have
to look at.
So InGen would have had to fileall kinds of paperwork to get
permits to even bring these in,and there's no indication they
(47:04):
did that in the movie, and infact it seems like they did that
sort breaks out of the cargoship and rampages through
not-in-San Diego, but there'salso because we're in San Diego.
(47:25):
I wanted to look at some localregulations as well, and so the
municipal code here says that noperson shall bring into or
maintain, and it goes through abunch of things that you can't
bring in but wild animals.
So I would say that dinosaurswould fall under that, but there
are some exceptions.
So the first exception is for alegally operated zoo or circus.
(47:47):
I think it's arguable whetheror not this park that they're
creating in San Diego would belegally operated, since nobody
knew about it.
They didn't get the properpermit to begin with to even
build it.
And the second exception isservice animals.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
My emotional support to you.
Speaker 8 (48:12):
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 asservice animals are dogs and
miniature horses, so I don'tthink any of these exceptions
(48:32):
would apply as well.
So I don't think they followthe proper procedures to break
these animals, these dinosaurs'inches in the air, Stephen.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Mr DNA is on the slide.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yeah, just really briefly.
I know we're kind of here atthe end, but this is all we've
been talking about here isde-extinction that's an actual
term of like the scientificeffort to bring animals that
have gone extinct back to life.
And legal scholars are alreadythinking about the legal
frameworks that could or shouldapply to de-extincted creatures.
(49:05):
And we've already talked alittle about personal injury and
the complexities aboutcausation and who would be
responsible exactly.
The Endangered Species Actwe've talked about a little bit,
although that's a littlenuanced, because never before
has the ESA been applied toanimals that have been created
by humans.
So, for example, I think ofglowfish, like that are the
(49:26):
little clownfish that have theglowing DNA from jellyfish.
If those escaped into thenatural habitat, we wouldn't
think of those as an endangeredspecies just because there's
small numbers of them.
So that's a weirdly complexquestion too.
The National EnvironmentalPolicy Act has complexities
because dinosaurs are going tobe both an invasive species
(49:48):
because they don't exist in anyecosystem, so they're going to
like knock out other speciesfrom the ecosystem's
biodiversity, but they're alsomaybe endangered and the law
treats those things reallydifferently.
So that's really difficult topin down.
And then genetically modifiedorganisms.
The regulation of them is allover the place.
So we've been talking so muchabout whether laws could apply
(50:10):
to the dinosaurs.
Maybe we should talk aboutwhether they should.
That's the upshot here.
So I'm a lot of Bowdoin.
Whether they should, that's theupshot here.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
So I do a lot of boating and I didn't want to
scrim during the Jurassic Parkrebirth a lot.
But one of the issues fromfollowing Kingdom is you have a
cargo ship go from Costa Rica toHumboldt County, california, in
the span of 24 hours.
(50:39):
That's not possible.
That's over 4,000 miles and todo that in 24 hours would mean
that the ship is traveling inabout 181.5 miles per hour,
which is like 157 knots.
(51:03):
The average speed of a cargoship 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 owningdinosaurs, but not shipping
being abused by like that.
So just remember that we're allplanes away and we want to
(51:24):
thank you all for your time.
We're like at one minute, solike there's a little time for
questions, but you guys in theback are high-fiving because
lawyers are full time.
But you can follow us onInstagram and Twitter and TikTok
at the legal gates.
We're going to start bloggingmore and thank you and enjoy the
(51:46):
rest of the conference.
Hello, my name is Joshua Gilliland, one of the
founding attorneys of the LegalGeeks.
The following was recorded atSan Diego Comic-Con on July 24th
2025.
It is our Jurassic ParkLiability for Dinosaur Attacks
Never Goes Extinct panel.
We had so much fun putting thispanel together and a great time
at Comic-Con.
I hope you enjoy the recording.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We'll do some introductions right now while
we're waiting.
First up, Magistrate JudgeStacey Beckerman from Portland.
Thank you, Judge.
Well, we're proud of MagistrateJudge Stan Bloomfans.
Unfortunately, his flightcanceled and he's unable to be
here.
A little chaos theory thathappened, but all plans away and
(00:44):
we're going to be okay.
We also have Kathy Steiner fromthe CBC, kristen Stephen,
michael, so should I know myfirst, first day of high school
(01:06):
today.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
It's just like you know, Josh always says well,
Mike knows where all the bodiesare buried, which isn't true at
all.
There's only one body, so we'regetting there, but that's like
from 1998?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, and it's a long time ago and far away in
Sacramento.
So let's begin.
Alright, we are here to talkabout Jurassic Park, we'll hit
on Jurassic World, we'll talkabout Camp Cretaceous.
We won't really get into thechaos theory, but stay tuned for
(01:39):
that.
And this is lots of greatanimation for the rest of the
party as well.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
So for the panelists what is your favorite species of
dinosaur?
I'm an Ankylosaurus kind of guy.
A little throwback to me comingas Dr Hammond, the older person
in the script.
It's like a giant armadillo Iguess you still see walking
(02:05):
around today.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
so I'm kind of fond of that one, the velociraptor.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Velociraptor because they're clever yeah, I always
liked the triceratops.
They just seemed like kind ofgentle giants, like kind of
fearsome but cool just cool.
Speaker 7 (02:22):
So I don't have a favorite species.
But as for individual dinosaurs, it's a tie between Bumpy and
Cindy.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Kathy, uh, dinosaurs.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh, Triceratops for me.
So there's no wrong answer,unless you pick something that's
not a dinosaur.
Alright, so let's talk aboutwrongful death at Jurassic Park.
The first movie is a wrongfuldeath case.
You have an employee get beaten.
(02:57):
Just imagine being a partnercounsel.
That would be an unpleasantafternoon.
I'm not sure what it's like fora lawyer for a zoo, but that
would be concerning.
Now there are lots of jets thathappen in the first movie and
the comedy movies, but justfocusing on the first film, we
(03:19):
have our corporate spy whotypically has issues of
contributory negligence.
The horror story of that poorlawyer just doing his job and
killed like that, that's the sinof the movie.
He was the true hero and he wasmurdered by a T-Rex.
(03:41):
Now I just don't know if therecould be comparative negligence,
but I think it's the kids withthe flashlight or the signal of
the T-Rex.
If those meddling children hadbeen coming out of the
flashlight we wouldn't have amovie, it would have just been
really slow.
We have Sam Jackson dying inHulk again, which is a motif
(04:02):
with his movie characters.
Lucy Minnelli is also a motifand he theoretically just
assumed the risk of going out,knowing that there were molester
actors running around.
Now you have the Doctor who lookat the other movies in the
animated series.
It's like is there a good guyor a bad guy?
(04:29):
It's really hard to tell, butit's Steve.
Lund who's responsible for allthis?
And at the end of the day, it'slike you're working at a place
where dinosaurs have to eatpeople.
There's going to be someassumption of this, but this
raises the issue.
Speaker 8 (04:42):
Kathy can you patent on this or do you have any?
So in the sequel to JurassicPark, the Lost World, peter
Ludlow, who is the new CEO ofInGen, he makes a statement.
He says an extinct animal thatthey brought back to life has no
rights and exists because wemade it, we patented it, we own
(05:02):
it.
In the original movie, if we goto the next slide, in the
original movie they explain howthey brought the dinosaurs back
and what they did was they wereable to create the dinosaurs by
using DNA technology.
They sequenced DNA that theyobtained from blood in a
preserved mosquito and then usedfrog DNA to fill in the gaps in
(05:27):
the DNA sequence.
And then what happens?
So the next slide after that?
Sorry, two slides, and theseare all screenshots from the
tutorial that they show in themovie that explains how they
created the dinosaurs, and I seewe have a Mr DNA right there
that I'm going to name.
We did not plan that, but theUS Supreme Court has actually
(05:55):
commented on the issue ofwhether or not you can patent
naturally occurring things, andin 1980, in a case called Dino
versus Chocolate Body they saidthat a person who invents or
discovers any new usefulmanufacture or composition of
matter can patent it.
Sorry, I can't read my notes,and so in that case there was a
(06:16):
man by the name of Chakrabadi Idon't think I'm pronouncing that
correctly.
He sought a patent for ahuman-made genetically
engineered bacterium that couldbreak down crude oil to help
clean up oil spills, and thecourt said that that was
patentable because it wassomething that was not naturally
occurring.
He created it so he couldpatent it even though the
(06:39):
organism itself wasquote-unquote natural.
And then we get to 2013.
In another case, the SupremeCourt rule.
The case is association ofmolecular pathology versus
myriad genetics, and in thatcase you have myriad genetics
who sequence the BRCA1 and BRCA2genes, and for those of you
(07:01):
that don't know what that is,it's a very important gene to
women, because if there aremutations in that gene, that
indicates that you have a higherlikelihood for breast cancer.
And so Myriad Geneticssequenced the gene and then they
invented some diagnostic toolsto determine if there were
mutations in the gene and theytried to patent it, and the
(07:23):
court said they were not allowedto patent it because the
sequence itself was a naturallyoccurring gene.
So what we have to ask in thissituation is whether or not the
DNA sequence, if we can go tothe slide with the DNA sequence
oh, we're on that one, sorrythat one.
So.
Is this DNA sequence?
(07:43):
Oh, we're on that one, sorrythat one.
So is this DNA sequencenaturally occurring?
And you have to remember theygot it from dinosaur blood and
then they put in frog DNA.
So who thinks that's naturallyoccurring you see a couple hands
out there and who thinks thatis man-made?
So the court hasn't ruled onthis, but I think the rest of
(08:05):
you, I think I would make theargument that it was man-made,
because putting together thosetwo things isn't naturally
occurring, because I don't thinka dinosaur and a frog have made
it yet.
And the other thing I wanted topoint out too, to add to my
argument, is all right, anybio-majors out there.
(08:26):
I was a bio-ma major.
I know she's my sister, allright, who knows what is a
different or unusual about thisDNA 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 Biomajors.
Is B a naturally occurring DNA?
I see a lot of head shaking.
No, that's correct.
(08:47):
So it's not what we were taughtwhen I was a bio major.
So you have A, c, t and G areyour nucleotides, for DNA B is
not a naturally occurring one,but according to Google, b can
stand for complementary DNA orcDNA, which is actually a
man-made sequence.
So if we think the graphicdesigners for this movie were
(09:10):
bio majors, they might haveactually Indicated to us that
this was not naturally occurring, with a man-made and therefore
practical.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
But maybe they just made a mistake.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Thank you, andy, for the ring captains, but we're
trying to find a place that'sgreat for the panelists.
Leave them on the mics, please.
So, michael, let's talk aboutcausation.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Does causation exist in the air?
Well, first I'd like to welcomeeverybody to Jury Do tonight.
The issue of causation is ajury question.
You get called for jury dutyand it's not a criminal case.
Most likely you're going to behaving to decide did what the
defendant do cause the injury?
(09:58):
And we're going to focus onactual and possible cause,
because that's what has to bethrough.
We're going to point the onefinger tonight about who had a
duty to do what and what's thatduty to reach.
But causation is what comesdown to.
First you have actual causation.
This is referred to as but-for.
You're asking Mike, what is abut-for?
I tell you it is to poop with.
(10:19):
Thank you, and this will be mylast time around where we go to
that.
But for causation is what a lotof people refer to as the
butterfly effect.
You say, well, but for thishappening?
But for a harness, you wouldn'thave fallen into the raptor bin
.
But for the raptor bin beingelectronic instead of
(10:43):
hand-cranked, you wouldn't havefallen in.
But for the designer designingfor Raptors, he wouldn't have
done it.
You go back until you get tothat butterfly in Africa that
flapped its wings.
So the courts have done it andsaid at some point we have to
cut that off, and what they dois they cut it off with
foreseeability, and that's wherewe get to proximate comics, and
the trouble I have when Idecided to tackle this is that
(11:03):
I'm at Comic-Con, whereeverybody in this room thinks
everything is foreseeable.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
They're like well, maybe not in this verse but on
verse five.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
this is what's happening and you've got to
believe I'm not going to leaveComic-Con without talking about
something super.
So we have intervening andsuperseding causation.
Rarely is it just plaintiff anddefendant.
There's usually somebody elseinvolved in it and the question
is that other person'sparticipation was an interceding
cause that just contributes toit, or was it a superseding
(11:34):
cause, meaning it cuts offliability, and the example
normally used is the caraccident where defendant hits
the victim.
Victim ends up going to thehospital and the doctor commits
malpractice.
The defendant says and thedoctor commits malpractice.
The defendant says hey, thatdoctor'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 foreverything.
(11:55):
You're the proximate cause.
I think it's kind of unfair todoctors to say that your
malpractice is foreseeable.
Therefore, what you do, we'regonna hold that other guy
accountable for it.
So I was hoping someone wouldcome as dogs in and I could
point at them, but Everyone.
(12:16):
If you're a police attorney,you wanna point as many people
as possible so you have as manypockets 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'sactually gonna help you through.
So you're my jury and, becauseit's your question, the judges
on the panel can't give adecision on this.
They decide stuff about dutyand breach.
(12:37):
All right let's throw somescenarios at you.
So we have, on the next slide,the Estates of McDougal.
Is going to claim Nedry, youare the actual approximate cause
.
Nedry, of course, is going toargue 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 offthe power to everything.
(12:58):
I actually kept the security onto the Raptors.
It was Hammond who decided toturn off everything and that's
how the Raptors escaped.
He's the actual causation.
And besides, it's foreseeablethat on this island where a
hurricane's coming, the powermight go out no backup generator
kind of thing.
(13:19):
So could he get off?
Probably not, because there's atiming issue and that Nedry's
actions occurred before Hammondturned it off.
So he can't really claim well,somebody else did it first.
And the same thing comes whenthe engine tries to do a defense
of well, somebody else did itfirst.
And the same thing comes whenthe engine tries to do a defense
of well, nedry did everything,nedry did it before.
So more than likely it's not asupersede uniform, but it is
(13:43):
contributory towards it.
So that's something after thispanel you'll have to, you know,
if you want to decide later anddebate about it with your fellow
Comic-Conners For each personthat died in this, who actually
caused it?
Who was the proximate cause,and was that something that
could cut off the chain ofliability?
And if you think of one thingInjun warned everybody before
(14:07):
anybody died.
If I was going to address thejury, ladies and gentlemen of
the jury, you were warned tocover your butts.
Did anybody cover their butts.
No, they are all responsible,contributory negligence.
They should be off the hook.
And Josh touched on thisearlier Did Dr Malcolm actually
(14:30):
killed our beloved attorney?
He was the one that decided tostep in, pick the flares out and
lead them towards the outhouse.
As we all know, apparentlyT-Rexes can't see unless it's
moving.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
Although the thing has a nose the size of a
Volkswagen.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
it'll disappear if you're not moving.
He's the one that threw it.
He's the one that led to theouthouse being knocked over.
That caused our belovedattorney to move and that's what
led to it.
Dr Malcolm caused the death ofour attorney, not him.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
We got a jury instruction for that.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
This is actually a real one.
That's written in the jury.
If you're in an emergencysituation, you're not held to
the same standard as somebodythat's right in the jury.
If you're in an emergencysituation, you're not held to
the same standard as somebodythat's trying to reflect on the
proper course of action.
So Dr Malcolm does have thedefense of.
I was in an emergency situation.
There's a T-Rex.
I did what I thought was rightin this situation, although
maybe I should have thrown theflares onto the other side of
(15:31):
the road, where somebody was nottrying to hide.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Judge Buckerhead, can you assure Jurassic Park?
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Sure, good evening geeks.
Obviously, liability insuranceis important for any business
that's offering an inherentlydangerous activity, and it's
generally available forbusinesses like zoos or
amusement parks, or maybe abetter analogy is like a shark
cave diving or something.
But the problem is it'sexpensive, of course.
(16:04):
So a lot of companies thatoffer dangerous activities, so
like Disney, for example, isself insured.
The only potential limitationfor Jurassic Park being insured
is you can't insure illegalactivities.
That's seen as bad policybecause you are promoting crimes
and so you could not.
Jurassic Park likely could notget coverage for any
(16:25):
unauthorized dinosaur cloning orillegal tours like the Dinosaur
.
But what if John Hammondshopped around and tried to get
liability coverage for JurassicPark and nobody would insure
Jurassic Park?
Could the government step in orcould courts step in and force
insurance companies to insureJurassic Park?
And the short answer is no.
(16:46):
Generally, neither governmentsnor courts can force an
insurance company to enter intoa contract with a party, and so
states of course try toencourage insurance companies to
offer coverage, much likeCalifornia is doing now with
respect to offering incentivesto insurers to provide
homeowners policy in high-riskfire areas.
(17:09):
But, of course, if insurancecompanies do offer a policy and
offer worry-free liabilityinsurance for Jurassic Park, and
then they were to refuse to payfor any harm caused.
That's covered by the policy.
That's when the courts step inand force the insurance company
to pay, and that happens all thetime.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
So what could possibly?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
go wrong.
What could possibly go wrong,Christine?
Let's talk about disloyalemployees.
Speaker 7 (17:39):
Sure, there seems to be a pattern of betrayal in
these films and it ofteninvolves a company's workers not
just turning on it but stealingvaluable company assets.
And for the sake of expediencehere I'm just going to assume
(18:00):
that US apply and thatjurisdiction venue are proper in
the US courts.
So let's go over the elementsthat either InGen or BioSyn
respectively would need to showto establish a civil claim for
breach of the duty of loyalty.
The first is a relationshipgiving rise to the duty of
loyalty.
The California state arelationship giving rise to the
duty of loyalty.
The California state.
Courts generally hold that anemployer-employee relationship
is sufficient.
So as to Ramsey Cole, it seemsreasonably clear that he's an
(18:24):
employee.
He's described ascommunications or head of
communications for Biosyn.
As to Ian Malcolm, a little bitless clear, but Sattler
describes him as Biosyn'sin-house philosopher and at one
point Dodgson purports to firehim.
So maybe he is hired as anemployee.
And then you have Dennis Nedry.
(18:44):
The source material gives somepretty strong hints that he's
probably meant to be anindependent contractor.
He refers to bidding for thejob and another character refers
to Nedry's people in Cambridge.
So he appears to be affiliatedwith a separate company.
But even assuming that he is anindependent contractor, that
doesn't necessarily get him outof trouble.
He might still owe a fiduciaryduty of loyalty if he also
(19:06):
qualifies as an agent of InGen.
So an agent is someone whorepresents another in dealing
with third parties.
So just briefly, the test is ifNedry had been authorized by
InGen to deal with third partieson its behalf and setting up
the computer system, ingen stillretained the right to control
Nedry's activities.
He might be in anagent-principal relationship.
(19:27):
Those are more examples of thefactual questions that Michael
referenced that are likely to bedisputed and you might need a
jury to decide them.
So the second thing you need isthe person who owes a duty must
have knowingly acted againstthe employer's interests or
knowingly acted on behalf of aparty whose interests were
adverse to the employer.
(19:47):
So for Nedry, he's being paidto steal valuable dinosaur
embryos the personal property ofInGen and deliver them to
Biosyn, ingen's competitor.
He also creates a massivesafety risk which ultimately
leads to property damage,physical injury and death when
he fiddles with the computer andsecurity systems.
To try to cover up hiswrongdoing wrongdoing For
(20:16):
Malcolm he discloses to Sattlerthat the locusts are part of a
larger project called Hexapod.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Allies tells her, where to find the lab.
Speaker 7 (20:19):
Gives her a device that will allow her physical
access to the restricted lab sothey can steal a locust DNA
sample.
And finally, as to Ramsey, hepoints out the location of the
elevators to the sub-levels thatrequire special clearance and
gives Grant and Sattler 30minutes alone, knowing and
expecting that they will steal a.
DNA sample.
All of this is either againstInGen's or Biosense's interest,
(20:43):
respectively, and then, finally,there must be damages
approximately caused by thebreach.
Yes, moving on.
So the factual wrinkle ofinterest here is the nature of
the property being stolen,specifically the live embryos
and DNA samples.
The physical embodiment ofthose things likely carries
(21:05):
valuable information about InGenand Biosense research that
they've invested a lot of timeand effort into developing.
However, to the extent that theduty of loyalty claim is based
on misappropriation ofconfidential information, the
company is going to have to lookat whether the trade secret law
might supersede the duty ofloyalty claim.
So, for example, the CaliforniaTrade Secret Misappropriation
(21:27):
Act is a statute that allowsrecovery of damages for injury
caused by the misappropriationof trade secrets, but it's the
exclusive remedy for conductthat falls within its terms, and
many courts have interpretedCAATSA to broadly supersede
claims based on misappropriationof any information that's
claimed to be confidential, evenif it doesn't actually meet the
definition of a trade secret.
(21:47):
So if the genetic informationthat's contained within the
embryos and the DNA samples is atrade secret or otherwise is
confidential information, thisaspect of Nedry's and Malcolm's
and Cole's wrongdoing wouldlikely have to be addressed
under trade secret law or someother theory that is not
superseded.
So for Dennis however, there maystill be a way to allege a duty
(22:09):
of loyalty claim based on allof the other ways that he has
acted against InGen's interests.
Of loyalty claim based on allof the other ways that he has
acted against Injin's interests,namely being deceptive and
enabling a major security breachthat endangers the physical
safety of everyone on the island, including himself.
Finally, you might ask, aren'tCole and Malcolm just doing
their civic duty by disclosingBiosyn's wrongdoing?
(22:30):
And it is true that there arevarious state and federal laws
that protect whistleblowers fromretaliation by their employers
for disclosing what theyreasonably believe to be
violations of the law in variouscontexts that doesn't mean,
however, that they canfacilitate the theft of locust
DNA samples, although thefederal law does provide a
narrow, limited immunity fordisclosures to government
(22:51):
officials or attorneys solelyfor the purpose of recording or
investigating a suspectedviolation of the law.
So, ultimately, the takeawayhere is that so you and a
scientist have the right ideayou should nurture loyalty and
treat your workers well.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
So, I think it's a good idea to have lions and wild
lions running for payment.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Just so you know we're talking about this panel.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
People are like oh, that sounds silly, that sounds
stupid.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
This is Irvine, california, about an hour and a
half north of here.
I grew up in the town rightnext door.
This is a real place where youcan drive your own little lions.
If you look closely at thepicture you see you've got
somebody not driving their ownlane.
You have a window open the ladyto pet the lions.
More than likely it could havebeen me in the back of that
station wagon without a seatbeltand the driver was probably
(23:43):
smoking.
My parents actually gotwarnings about be on the lookout
for an escaped hippo.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
That happened twice.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
They eventually got shut down because the lions and
elephants were escaping andmauling people and guests.
So, yep, these are issues thatactually have real-life
representation.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I will add watch the documentary Ward about making a
movie and it's a ticket from theBirds, her husband, they had 70
lions and they were trying tomake this movie.
Over 100 people got bit bylions and tigers.
(24:24):
It's insane to watch.
It's on Peacock.
Enjoy your Friday night.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
And, by the way, life is Just For.
Ice is still available in.
Florida.
If anybody wants to go, allright, we have to stick up for
our own here.
If you look at that quote it'squoted all the time from
Shakespeare, and it's probablythe highest compliment you could
actually give to an attorney.
What it says is if we want tostart a rebellion, we want to
(24:52):
overthrow the powers that be andinstall chaos and get rid of
civilization, the first thing wehave to do is get rid of the
guardians of the law, thegatekeepers that keep us
civilized peoples in place, andthat is attorneys, so it's kind
of a high compliment if thefirst named character that gets
killed off is the blood-suckingattorney Ferreira so that
(25:15):
compliment immediately getstaken away.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
There's a couple of memorable ones in the movie.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
When you first see the dinosaurs welcome to
Jurassic Park the tremblingglass of water and then, yeah,
the attorney getting eaten onthe outhouse.
Thanks Spielberg for that.
And if you must know, the nextslide there is an exclusive SPCD
(25:41):
toy from 2022 is Outhouse Chaos.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
You two can reenact the famous scene where the
attorney is in the outhousegetting beaten.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Your children can play with it.
You can do it, so I thought itwas my, my duty to stick up for
attorneys in this case and seewhat's he really still back.
And because we're talking aboutan outhouse, I'm gonna talk
about duty my second food joke.
Thank you on it.
There's a lot of duties thatare involved with this attorney.
That's what I'm not going totalk about.
(26:10):
Was he denied a rest break onit?
There's a lot of duties that areinvolved with this attorney I'm
not going to talk about was hedenied a?
Rest break because he was onhis break, apparently, when the
TRX ate him.
I'm not going to talk about hisduty of confidence to his
actual clients when he sayswe're going to make so much
money, it's like what do youmean?
We, they hired you.
They're going to make a lot ofmoney.
(26:31):
What I'm really, really gonnafocus on is this duty of
confidence?
this is the first time anybody'sever inspected a Safari for the
dinosaurs.
And when you don't have theknowledge as an attorney, you're
either supposed to find anattorney that does, associate
attorney with that does, or gainthe knowledge, and that's what
(26:52):
most attorneys do.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
They don't want to turn away cases.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
In this case, he has to become knowledgeable, and
what we do is attorneys is hireexperts.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So that's what.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Jura was supposed to do when he's coming to inspect
it.
There's a similar team so hecan get the knowledge to inform.
If this part is safe, hebron'sa rock star that's what he gets
in plain of.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
He gets one person and he's a chaos star.
That's what he gets in plain of.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
He gets one person and he's a chaos fetishian.
And I looked into chaos theoryand we're back to the butterfly
effect and his basic role issaying we can't predict anything
over a long period of timebecause there's too many
variables.
That's what chaos theory goesafter.
Hey, you're not hopeful at all.
Bring in Dr Grant, who spendsthe whole movie going Wow, they
run in herds.
Wow, they're not actuallycold-blooded, wow, look at this
(27:37):
the most beneficial thing, hesays, is Humans and dinosaurs
have been separated for millionsof years.
We have no idea who it's thatYou're useless too.
Then we have Dr Sadler apaleobiologist.
A botanist.
What's the botanist going totell you about the safety of
dinosaurs and keeping yourguests safe, or how to run an
amusement park?
I love her character.
I think she's the most kick-asscharacter in the movie.
(28:00):
She puts Hammond in his placeabout sexism, about who's going
to go rescue somebody.
She's awesome.
She doesn't know how to run anamusement park.
She does not know how to run asafari or a campground.
So yeah, I can't convince DrMalcolm who Steven served me he
was going to possibly ask, so Ididn't.
I can convince Dr Hammond.
(28:20):
Instead I can do a couple morebuttons over the course of the
panel.
So the only person who has anyexperience is McDoug, who came
over from the game park inAfrica and his advice is put the
raptors down.
His other solution was let'sengage the lysine effect so all
(28:41):
the dinosaurs will know Koma anddie.
Nobody listens to him.
So I would argue that, in spiteof how I want to stick up for
Gerard, he fails to do it inconfidence because he did not
get the knowledge necessary toactually fight.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Fun fact, my brother named his son Ian.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Now.
I'm going to assume we're inCalifornia and the other big
issue people have with ourbeloved attorney is when things
get tough.
When you have to go.
You have to go.
According to the othercharacters, he went running off
and abandoned the children.
So did he have an actual dutyto protect these kids?
California, you have generallyno duty to protect somebody else
(29:24):
.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
There is an exception , and that's if you have a
special relationship.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
And I think the law is kind of creepy and says you
have a special relationship toprotect a child, and I'm like
special relationship to a child,Gross.
But it's when you're in a sortof custodial capacity and the
child is looking to you fortheir safety and care.
You can voluntarily undertakethis.
So that's kind of the questionis, did he have?
(29:51):
Did they look to him for theirprotection?
And it's quite obvious they did.
They kept saying over and overagain in panicked voices he left
us.
He left us.
Of course, his version is theywanted to sit with Dr Grant.
I don't know how they ended upin my car to begin with, and
they the parents.
I'm not a teacher, I'm not acoach.
The parents entrusted them totheir grandfather for their
(30:11):
safety, not me.
I'm not a teacher, I'm not acoach.
The parents entrusted them totheir grandfather for their
safety, not me.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
If I was prosecuting, I would definitely say he
voluntarily did it.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
When he told him to put back, or told Timmy to put
back, the night vision gogglesthat are expensive, he asserted
himself into the role of theauthority figure and an adult
and that's when he took on thecustodial relationship and he
was responsible for protectingthose kids, Naturally he would
have been worthless.
You saw that T-Rex comesthrough the sunroof of the Jeep.
Those kids held back with theirlittle arms that T-Rex.
(30:42):
They wouldn't have beenprotecting him.
And then when the car justsquished Timmy was safe.
Timmy's small Graham would havebeen crushed by that car.
He wouldn't have used it, buthe still had that I believe he
still had that to be protected.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Or he could have said put the flashlight down.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
On it and just to leave you.
You can't spell, indeed,without engine.
I believe they're probablylooking for a new current
council.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
So inquire with him.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
All right, Stephen, let's talk about Camp Cretaceous
.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
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 placeconcurrently with the 2015
Jurassic World film.
So while Claire and Owen arefighting off the Indominus Rex,
so are these six teenagers,except without weapons, without
adults and without shoes, withtraction.
(31:40):
So there and when the islandgets evacuated at the end of the
film, the children are leftbehind to their own devices on
the island, and then ensuesseven seasons of them versus
dinosaurs.
So can the parents or thechildren sue Jurassic Park for
their injuries?
It's pretty obvious that, yes,there's negligence the breach of
(32:01):
duty to care for these children.
Negligent infliction ofemotional distress for watching
your friends be almost eaten bydinosaurs.
Breach of contract, because theparents think they're sending
their kids to a fun summer campwhen in fact it's like a
dinosaur-themed Hunger Games.
There's oh, I don't know ifit's a product liability.
If there's strict liability, ifthe dinosaurs are products,
(32:24):
there might be a liability there.
And also false imprisonment,because the children are trapped
on this island, they're notable to go anywhere.
But the real question iswhether the parents are able to
sue if they signed a release ofclaims and liability waiver.
And so for all of us who haveever done anything fun, you know
that you have to sign a releaseof liability to do that thing.
(32:47):
It's a contractual allocationof risk and it's perfectly legal
.
You can say I assume the riskof injury if you let me
participate in your fun thing,and so chances are that parents
of these children signed aliability waiver and courts will
generally enforce them if theyare clear and unambiguous, if
(33:08):
they are specific about therisks that you're going to face,
they don't violate publicpolicy and if you knowingly
signed the waiver.
Now, if I was representing theparents, I would say that this
is not.
Any liability waiver that theysigned is not enforceable.
We can sue because, first ofall, those waivers will only
excuse conduct that is based onnegligence, simple negligence
(33:30):
Someone does an oopsie, you gethurt.
You can assume that risk,that's fine.
But if there's some sort ofgross negligence involved, where
there's reckless disregard forsomeone's safety, or if there's
intentional conduct, then youdon't.
That is not within the scope ofyour release of liability.
And of course I would say thatexposing children to like huge,
(33:51):
building-sized human eatingmachines is grossly negligent.
That is not within the scope oftheir waiver.
And also those that any sort ofrelease might be against public
policy, because the state, thegovernment, has an interest in
protecting children, as we werejust talking about, and so a
court might be inclined toexcuse a waiver of liability if
(34:15):
the children's safety isinvolved.
So if I was representing theparents, I think we'd have a
pretty clear shot.
Any waiver of liability is notworth the amber it was written
on.
We're good to go.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
So let's talk about the incident, Christine.
Any comments?
Speaker 7 (34:34):
So I just want to be clear from the outset that InGen
and Ms Rani Global are facingmassive potential exposure,
regardless of the proceduresused to pursue recovery.
But this question asks whetherthe procedural device of a class
action is an available meansfor large numbers of injured
(34:55):
people to seek recovery, forlarge numbers of injured people
to seek recovery.
So a class action is a lawsuitthat's been brought by one or
more plaintiffs on behalf of alarger group.
But it's not always going to beappropriate to certify a class
just because you have a lot ofinjured people.
The parties seekingcertification have to satisfy
certain requirements and sincestate class action procedures
can vary, I'm going to usefederal law for this discussion.
(35:17):
So a party seeking to certify aclass has to satisfy all of the
prerequisites in Rule 23A, theFederal Rules of Civil Procedure
.
First, the class has to be sonumerous that joinder of all the
members is impracticable and,according to the film, the live
count on the day of the incidentis 22,216.
So numerosity is probably notgoing to be a contested issue.
Second, there must be commonquestions of law or facts.
(35:41):
This requires you to lookclosely at the elements that
plaintiffs must prove in orderto establish their claims.
So to survive as a class claim,the claim has to depend on a
common contention, which must becapable of class-wide
resolution, meaning thatdetermination of that
contention's truth or falsitywill resolve an issue that is
central to the validity of theclaim in one stroke.
(36:01):
So, for example, you might trysomething like did defendants
breach a duty of care by failingto evacuate all park visitors
sooner upon learning of theasset containing failure?
If you went with something likethis, the class definition
might look something like allvisitors present in the park
during the time when theIndominus was not secured and
(36:22):
herpatic.
So the decision to concentratethe visitors in one area and not
immediately ferry them off theisland was one that affected all
class members.
Even if reasonable minds mightdiffer about whether the company
actually did enough to conformto the applicable standard of
care, an up or down answer wouldresolve the issue for the
(36:42):
entire class.
Next, the claims and defensesof the plaintiff who's going to
serve as the classrepresentative, must be typical
of the claims and defenses ofthe class.
The test is whether othermembers have the same or similar
injury, whether the action isbased on COVID, which is not
unique to the named plaintiff,and whether other class members
have been injured by the samecourse of conduct.
(37:02):
And here you might start to geta little pushback from defense
counsel.
Although the slow evacuation iscommon to all plaintiffs, the
extent of their injuries islikely to be different because
in the chaotic aftermath of theescape there were some fairly
atypical chains of events, suchas a park employee getting
(37:23):
tossed around by differentflying animals, only to be eaten
by a misosaurus.
So if you had a lot of exampleslike that, where the injuries
really stem from an unusualseries of events, it might be
harder to find a typicalrepresentative.
Finally, the person whorepresents the class has to be
able to fairly and adequatelyprotect the interests of the
class members.
But since we don't knowanything about those
hypothetical classrepresentatives or their counsel
, I'm just going to spotplaintiffs as requirements.
(37:47):
If the plaintiffs can get pastRule 23, they still have to
satisfy at least one of thesubdivisions of Rule 23.
So class actions for damagestypically proceed under 23b3,
which means the party seekingcertification has to show not
just that there are commonissues but that common questions
of law or fact predominate.
And the reason is that whencommon issues predominate, a
(38:09):
class action is likely to savetime, effort and expense
compared to individual lawsuits.
But if they don't, a classaction probably wouldn't be that
much more efficient.
An individual question is goingto be one where the evidence is
going to be different from classmember to class member, whereas
a common question is going tobe one that can be resolved
based on generalized class-wideproof.
(38:29):
So the predominance inquiryasks whether the common issues
are more prevalent or moreimportant than the individual
issues.
So this is often where thefight is and where it's probably
likely to be.
Here there's plenty of theorieswe all can imagine, many of
which have been named here,under which InGen Mizrani
Corporation or their employeesor vendors might possibly be
(38:51):
liable to individual plaintiffs,but defendants are going to
want to argue there are too manyindividualized issues for these
theories.
So for the negligence theories,they're going to argue there's
too many individualized offenses, right?
What about people whocontribute to their injuries
through their own negligence,like failing to heed warning
signs or deliberatelyantagonizing the dinosaurs, or
failing to heed evacuationnotices?
Speaker 5 (39:13):
They're also going to want to argue intervening
causes.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
What about people whose injuries have been caused
by subsequent unpredictableactions of another park goer?
And they're also going to wantto say that individualized
damage calculations are going toprove overwhelming.
With such disparate injuries,it will be hard to come up with
a way to measure damages thatwould apply to all 22,216 people
(39:35):
.
So council for plaintiffsreally needs to think hard about
whether it's worth it to investa whole lot of money in trying
to certify a class if theevidence is such that this
motion for certification wouldprobably be defensible.
And if they decide it's notworth the risk.
There's still other ways theycan try to gain efficiencies.
They could move under theMulti-District Litigation Act
(39:58):
for a transfer of all of thecivil actions that are pending
in different courts to a singledistrict for consolidated or
coordinated pretrial proceedings.
If there's common questionswith facts, then the transfer
would be convenient and promotejudicial efficiency.
On the flip side, if defensecounsel is really taking a hard
look at the company's future anddecides this ship is going down
no matter what we do, theymight want to explore whether
(40:21):
they can use the bankruptcyprocedures to resolve any of
these claims, clear up thesedebts and salvage what they can
of the company.
Although there's been somedebate about the extent to which
mass personal injury claims canor should be resolved through
the bankruptcy mechanism, Onething the district court can
clearly do is that, in itsdiscretion, it could at least
order that all these cases haveto be tried in the same district
(40:43):
.
So, in the end, though, nomatter what procedures are used,
these are going to be somerough days ahead for these
companies.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
All right.
Due to time, I want all thepanelists to kick into gear like
they're being chased by a T-Rex.
So, michelle, hey, jurassicPark 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 toget so far.
(41:12):
I mean, that's a sympatheticplaintiff if someone's eaten by
a bat is being violent or adinosaur.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
So, helpful but not enough.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
They'll have the signs up, but they're still
going to need a completelydifferent judgment.
Judge Beckerman, can you tasedinosaurs?
Speaker 6 (41:32):
Josh, let me ask our jury Raise your hand if you
believe it is illegal to tase aT-Rex.
All right.
So raise your hand if you thinkit is legal to tase a T-Rex.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Who doesn't want to be dinner?
Speaker 6 (41:47):
Okay, Well, you know, we all spent a small fortune on
law school to learn that itdepends, of course, and I think
what's in your heads is that ofcourse it's okay if it's in
self-defense.
So if a T-Rex were to return toSan Diego and we found the
T-Rex outside the conventioncenter, if we had a reasonable
(42:10):
belief that the T-Rex posed animminent threat of death or
serious bodily injury, it wouldbe entitled to self-defense, and
that's well settled.
And so that self-defenseapplies unless you either
provoke or intentionally attractthe dinosaur.
So in the original movie, whenthe employees tased the dinosaur
(42:32):
that attacked Joffrey, that waslikely valid self-defense.
But in rebirth, where theyintentionally attracted
dinosaurs to retrieve theirgenetic information, it might be
a closer call.
But what about all of you withill-behaved dogs like mine who
might try the shock collar orthe shock fence in your yard?
(42:52):
Is that legal?
Have you asked yourself thatquestion?
Generally those tools are legalunless they rise to the level
of animal cruelty.
Every state has an animalcruelty law and sometimes a
shock collar or a similar devicecan rise to the level of
torture.
So if you're using them fortraining, generally not torture.
But there is a well-publicizedcase where moviegoers sued the
(43:18):
elephant trainers behind themovie Water for Elephants, and
they claimed that they attendedthe movie thinking that the
elephants had been treatedhumanely and that they were
surprised to learn that they hadused shock.
Coll court dismissed the case.
So generally, tasing animals isnot a great idea, but in a
(43:41):
small voltage it is allowedunder the law.
I want to add one note, and thatis that if a species is
threatened or endangered, theEndangered Species Act has
protected those species at ahigher level of criminality for
people who take or harass orharm a species that's listed as
endangered or threatened.
But I will note that today,both the Endangered Species Act
(44:04):
as well as the lawyers federallawyers who enforce it are in
danger of extinction.
So we may or may not bediscussing the Endangered
Species Act by the next time.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Kathy, can you point out that?
I'm sworn to the United States,so it depends In the Lost World
.
Speaker 8 (44:23):
Ingen brings into the US the cargo ship, two T-Rex, a
papa and a baby, andspecifically they bring it into
downtown San Diego.
We'll get into that in a moment.
So is that legal?
Well, as Stacy mentioned, aspecies act might be applicable
here.
And specifically, section 9A ofthe Endangered Species Act says
that, among other things, it isunlawful to import into or
(44:47):
export any such endangeredspecies into the US or take them
on the high seas, which they do.
They do, but dinosaurs are noton the endangered species list.
Duh, they're at Stanford.
But what if they wereresurrected?
And actually the news we'veseen recently that there have
been attempts to resurrect theholy man, that they apparently
(45:08):
resurrected a dire wolf.
I don't know, but if they wereresurrected, it is possible that
they could be categorized asendangered species and
potentially protected by theEndangered Species Act.
But technology always outpiecesthe law, so it would probably
take some time to do that.
But how do you rank?
We're in San Diego, home of theworld-famous San Diego Zoo.
(45:32):
How do they rank animals in?
Well, there's a lot ofpaperwork, a lot of regulations
and a lot of permits.
So what are some of thoseregulations?
Oh, actually, can I go back tothe screen?
So this is a screenshot fromthe movie where they bring the
animals into the Port of SanDiego.
The Port of San Diego.
You can walk outside and lookeast.
(45:54):
You'll see the port, that andthen that was not filmed here,
but you have to look at andthere's a lot of different
agencies.
Maybe we'll see what happens inthe next few years that regulate
the different have differentregulations about what you can
bring into the US, and so Ifirst looked at the USDA sorry,
(46:22):
and they have a lot ofregulations about turtles and
terrapins and things like that.
Obviously, there's not going tobe regulations addressing
dinosaurs, but according to mygo-to dinosaur expert, dino Dan
from Nick Jr, dinosaurs areactually more closely related to
birds, and so there are a tonof regulations about bringing
(46:43):
birds to the US, and it has todo with how many you're bringing
in.
Are they going to be pets orare they going to be poultry?
And so there's a lot ofdifferent things that you have
to look at.
So InGen would have had to fileall kinds of paperwork to get
permits to even bring these in,and there's no indication they
(47:04):
did that in the movie, and infact it seems like they did that
sort breaks out of the cargoship and rampages through
not-in-San Diego, but there'salso because we're in San Diego.
(47:25):
I wanted to look at some localregulations as well, and so the
municipal code here says that noperson shall bring into or
maintain, and it goes through abunch of things that you can't
bring in but wild animals.
So I would say that dinosaurswould fall under that, but there
are some exceptions.
So the first exception is for alegally operated zoo or circus.
(47:47):
I think it's arguable whetheror not this park that they're
creating in San Diego would belegally operated, since nobody
knew about it.
They didn't get the properpermit to begin with to even
build it.
And the second exception isservice animals.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
My emotional support to you.
Speaker 8 (48:12):
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 asservice animals are dogs and
miniature horses, so I don'tthink any of these exceptions
(48:32):
would apply as well.
So I don't think they followthe proper procedures to break
these animals, these dinosaurs'inches in the air, Stephen.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Mr DNA is on the slide.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yeah, just really briefly.
I know we're kind of here atthe end, but this is all we've
been talking about here isde-extinction that's an actual
term of like the scientificeffort to bring animals that
have gone extinct back to life.
And legal scholars are alreadythinking about the legal
frameworks that could or shouldapply to de-extincted creatures.
(49:05):
And we've already talked alittle about personal injury and
the complexities aboutcausation and who would be
responsible exactly.
The Endangered Species Actwe've talked about a little bit,
although that's a littlenuanced, because never before
has the ESA been applied toanimals that have been created
by humans.
So, for example, I think ofglowfish, like that are the
(49:26):
little clownfish that have theglowing DNA from jellyfish.
If those escaped into thenatural habitat, we wouldn't
think of those as an endangeredspecies just because there's
small numbers of them.
So that's a weirdly complexquestion too.
The National EnvironmentalPolicy Act has complexities
because dinosaurs are going tobe both an invasive species
(49:48):
because they don't exist in anyecosystem, so they're going to
like knock out other speciesfrom the ecosystem's
biodiversity, but they're alsomaybe endangered and the law
treats those things reallydifferently.
So that's really difficult topin down.
And then genetically modifiedorganisms.
The regulation of them is allover the place.
So we've been talking so muchabout whether laws could apply
(50:10):
to the dinosaurs.
Maybe we should talk aboutwhether they should.
That's the upshot here.
So I'm a lot of Bowdoin.
Whether they should, that's theupshot here.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
So I do a lot of boating and I didn't want to
scrim during the Jurassic Parkrebirth a lot.
But one of the issues fromfollowing Kingdom is you have a
cargo ship go from Costa Rica toHumboldt County, california, in
the span of 24 hours.
(50:39):
That's not possible.
That's over 4,000 miles and todo that in 24 hours would mean
that the ship is traveling inabout 181.5 miles per hour,
which is like 157 knots.
(51:03):
The average speed of a cargoship 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 owningdinosaurs, but not shipping
being abused by like that.
So just remember that we're allplanes away and we want to
(51:24):
thank you all for your time.
We're like at one minute, solike there's a little time for
questions, but you guys in theback are high-fiving because
lawyers are full time.
But you can follow us onInstagram and Twitter and TikTok
at the legal gates.
We're going to start bloggingmore and thank you and enjoy the
(51:46):
rest of the conference.
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