A jury trial begins on September 8 in Chatsworth, California, over the death of a 22-year-old who collapsed minutes after riding X2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain and died the following day. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner ruled Christopher Hawley's death an accident caused by blunt head trauma sustained in what the report called a park ride accident.
That ruling is an official finding, and it is worth separating from what remains contested. The medical examiner determined how he died. What a jury will decide is whether the ride was defectively designed and whether the park failed to warn riders, which are the claims in the lawsuit his family filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Six Flags has denied the allegations.
