http://www.adventure-journal.com/2011/10/judge-throws-out-lawsuit-in-utah-bear-attack-suit/
Bears are elements of the natural world and the state of Utah cannot be expected to protect people from them, a district judge has ruled, throwing out a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the parents of a boy who was killed by a bear while camping.
Judge David Mortensen said, “This court…concludes that a bear is a natural condition on the land and thus even assuming the state has duty, the state is immunized from suit.” He concurred with the state, which had argued that “there is no specific duty owed to the plaintiffs, and further, even if there were a duty, the state is immunized from suit under the ‘natural condition’ exception in the Governmental Immunity Act.”
On Father’s Day 2007, 11-year-old Samuel Ives was camping with family in Utah’s American Fork Canyon. In the middle of the night, he was dragged from his tent by a black bear. The same bear had raided the same campsite just 12 hours earlier, and Ives’s parents argued that the state Division of Wildlife Resources and Forest Service should have warned campers of the threat.
They sued both agencies, and in May, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball found the Forest Service negligent for not alerting campers and awarded $1.95 million to the family. He assessed $3 million in damages and concluded that the Forest Service was 65 percent responsible.
This is the second time a Utah judge has dismissed the suit against the state agency: It was thrown out in 2009, the family appealed, the state Supreme Court overturned the judgment, and it ended up back in court, leading to the current ruling.
