The Ethics of Emotional Trauma

There’s an interesting case that’s sprung up around the most recent Sea World fatality. I’ve written in this space about the human resources aspects of having one of your star attractions – which happens to be an eight-ton killer whale – casually kill one of your employees, and the ethics of having puny humans swimming around in the orca tank in the first place. This case, however, has been filed by some of the customers affected by the accident – specifically, by a family who says that their children were traumatized by having to witness the brutal killing…


You can pick up the story from the the MSNBC website if you’d like, but the basic idea is that the Connell family from New Hampshire were watching when the trainer was killed, and their young son has been permanently traumatized by the spectacle. The Connells are suing for a very large amount of cash, while the company is trying to defend themselves by noting that if this litigation is allowed to go forward, anyone who every witnesses any traumatic event in any public venue will be able to sue the venue, the people involved in the event, anyone who made or installed equipment in the venue, advertisers who carried ads about the event or the venue, or the relevant government which failed to sufficiently regulate the venue. To me, of course, it seems more like a question of ethics – or rather, a series of questions…


First of all, does an entertainment venue like Sea World have an obligation to prevent any visitor from seeing anything that might upset them? Granted that seeing a human being get killed by an animal is rather extreme, this is still a slippery slope; there is no way to be certain what sights will or will not traumatize any specific visitor, and having every customer sign a waiver seems impractical. Clearly, when you take your family to look at animals, there will always be some risk of the animals behaving in some unpleasant, frightening or disgusting manner – can you reasonably expect the owners to sanitize every possible aspect of a zoo or aquarium?


Secondly, how badly does someone have to be emotionally traumatized before you can sue over the event, and who gets to decide that? Leaving it to an industry of paid expert witnesses doesn’t really sound like it would be in the public interest, but just letting anybody who wants to sue for whatever they like is clearly impractical as well. Do two mauling episodes equal one drowning by an orca? What about three smaller fish being eaten by a larger fish? Alpha males fighting with Beta males? And if you do permit such actions to go forward, should the family be allowed to sue for punitive damages and emotional pain and suffering, or just the cost of the affected members’ therapy bill? For that matter, would the kid even need therapy if the parents didn’t keep dredging up this episode over and over, or would he have gone on to other heartbreak by now?


Granted that in the case where any customer has been materially harmed or damaged by any action of the company, deliberate or negligent, they have a right to sue for compensation and the company has a duty to make them whole, does that apply to every upsetting experience you will ever have with that firm? For that matter, should every company be allowed to display disturbing, upsetting, disgusting or traumatizing spectacles without any potential consequence, or should they be held accountable for what goes on in their facilities, whether they intended those displays or not?


It’s worth thinking about…