Callahan & Blaine

A worker at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California lost his leg to a carnival ride on the fair’s opening day. Officials say the man, who was not the ride operator, opened a safety gate and stepped in front of the “Wacky Worm” roller coaster.

He was struck by the ride and his leg was severed below the knee. An onlooker asked someone to bring her a bucket of ice and shoved the worker’s leg into it so that doctors could attempt to reattach the limb. The twenty-year old man’s name has not been released and there is no word if any attempt to reattach the leg was successful or not.

The Sonoma-Marin Fair is run by the Midway of Fun company of Oroville, California. A spokesman for the company said that the unidentified fair worker was stationed as a gatekeeper on a different ride and should not have been anywhere near the Wacky Worm – nor should he have opened the safety gate while the ride was operating.

Fair officials claim that there was no equipment malfunction, and do not know why the man would have walked in front of a moving ride. They are chalking the accident up to human error. Cal OSHA investigated the incident and has cleared the ride to reopen.

Callahan & Blaine, California’s premier litigation firm, is one of the leading firms in the state of California, and handles serious personal injury, wrongful death and product liability cases nationwide. In fact, in the last 5 years alone we’ve obtained over $1.2 billion in verdicts and settlements.

For example, Callahan & Blaine recently won a $7.25 million settlement in a similar case when a man’s leg was run over while he was trying to board a city bus in Orange County, California. In that case, the driver did not see the man and seriously injured his left leg by driving over it as she pulled away from the curb.

While our firm is located in Orange County, California, we handle serious personal injury, wrongful death and product liability cases nationwide. If you or someone you know has suffered a catastrophic injury or died as the result of an accident at work, please contact our California law firm for expert legal counsel.