Family of Utah boy killed by bear reaches settlement with state

The parents of a Pleasant Grove boy who was dragged from a campsite and killed by a bear in 2007 has settled a wrongful-death lawsuit with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, according to an attorney for the family. Samuel Ives, 11, was killed June 17, 2007, during a Father's Day camping trip near the Timpooneke Campground in American Fork Canyon. His body, which had been mauled by a black bear, was found about 400 yards from the family campsite. The bear was found and killed the next day. The Ives family sued the state and DWR in 2008, claiming the state was liable for the boy's death because officials failed to warn the public that a dangerous bear was in the area and had attacked other campers. "Sam's death was 100 percent preventable," the boy's mother, Rebecca Ives, told The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday. "The reason that we were so enraged when this happened was not because a bear attacked and killed our son, it was because the federal government and the state had been notified that they had a black bear out there that needed to be put down ... They failed to act and the result was that my son was killed." The case originally was tossed out by state judges in 2009 and 2011, but the Utah Supreme Court overturned one dismissal in 2013, saying the state had a duty to protect the young boy because DWR officials knew about the bear. The settlement agreement, hammered out through discussions during the past few months, awards the family financial damages, but fails to require the state to enact new policies or practices related to nuisance wildlife that may pose a threat, Tyler Young, an attorney for the family said Monday. "Our hope was that the state would implement a 'Sam Alert' for bears that had shown aggressive behaviors toward humans," Young said. "We weren't able to get anything like that." Young declined to disclose the financial terms of the agreement but said it is less than the statutory cap of $583,900 outlined in the state's governmental immunity law. Missy Larsen, spokeswoman for the Utah attorney general's office, which represented DWR in the wrongful-death lawsuit, confirmed the settlement Tuesday. Larsen said the agreement includes only financial compensation and does not require DWR to make any changes to its policy or procedures...more