A South Carolina resort has been ordered to pay $26 million to the family of a child who suffered chemical burns in its overchlorinated pool.
According to the federal lawsuit, the North Carolina family sued Myrtle Beach’s Caribbean Resort
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Project Description after their then 3-year-old child suffered severe chemical burns in the pool when they visited in May 2020.
On the day of a swim in the resort’s pools and lazy river, Heather Douglas, the boy’s mother, said that she noticed his groin and buttocks were red.
She applied some lotion and went home.
The following day, his skin began to blister, so she took him to his pediatrician, who prescribed Bactroban.
By the third day, his blisters had gotten worse, so she took him back to the pediatrician, who sent them to a local hospital. From there, he was transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Burn Center.
The blisters were diagnosed as “chemical burns related to exposure to an overchlorinated pool at the
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According to Kenneth Berger, an attorney for the family, what the boy went through initially “was this God-awful pain. His skin was being eaten away by chemicals. That's the way chlorine burns work — it doesn't typically happen all at once. It eats the skin away.'
The child spent a week in the burn unit before being sent home, where his family resumed treatment, which involved highly painful wound care.
“One of the things his family members talked about was that a couple of the men in the family, tough guys — and one who was former military — couldn't participate in (the boy’s) wound care when they got home because it hurt their feelings too much.” Berger said. “They talked about it being like torture, where you'd have four family members holding this child down while his mother worked to clean his wound.”
Following the incident, Douglas called the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and reported that her son had been chemically burned in the resort’s pools. Upon investigation, the health department found that the resort’s pools had “dangerously” high chlorine levels, out of compliance with state mandated standards.
Furthermore, an employee admitted to falsifying chlorine records for more than three years.
Deposed resort employees initially claimed that they had not received any other complaints from patrons but later admitted that they had received a few other customer complaints concerning people with burns or skin issues. Employees said they received those complaints only after Douglas’ son had been burned.
Meanwhile, the child, who is now 7, will likely have scars for the rest of his life.
“He's never going to forget the scars that run along the right side of his groin and his waistband,” Berger said. “The people who caused it should never forget either.”
According to Berger, in spite of the massive award, the lawsuit wasn’t about money for the boy’s mother.
“From the first time I met her, until the last time I spoke with her, it was all about accountability and making sure this never happened to anybody else,” he said. “Throughout the course of the entire case, we never once heard the word sorry, or an apology from this resort.”
