Judge Considers $2 Million Award in Bear Attack

A federal judge in Salt Lake City, Utah, is considering whether to award $2 million to the family of an 11-year-old Pleasant Grove boy killed by a bear at an American Fork Canyon campsite in 2007. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball took the case under advisement after a five-day trial, the Deseret News reported. His ruling could take months. During the trial, lawyers for Samuel Ives' family argued the U.S. Forest Service was negligent for failing to close the campground after a bear confronted another camper there earlier in the day. They say the agency should have closed the site until the bear was killed. "This is a simple case of duties, of breaches of those duties and the harm caused by the breach of those duties," said Allen Young, an attorney for the family. But attorneys for the Forest Service maintained there was no way to definitively know whether Samuel was killed by the same bear involved in the earlier incident. "The plaintiffs have undeniably suffered a tragic loss in their lives, but the United States is not responsible for that loss," said Jeffrey Nelson, an attorney for the Forest Service. Whether it was the same bear was not the point, Young countered, because the family never would have gone to the campground had it known there was a bear threat...more