KANSAS CITY, Kan._With enough investigation _ analyzing records, studying designs, perhaps running wired crash dummies down the ride _ experts promise they can learn why a 10-year-old boy died on a water slide.
Whether such an analysis of Caleb Schwab's death on Schlitterbahn's towering Verruckt is ever revealed publicly remains far less certain.
Taking lawsuits all the way to trial would be costly, so the most likely outcome figures to be settlements. Such deals typically come with agreements to keep any findings secret.
Settlements are also more probable because of limits the Kansas Legislature put on personal injury and wrongful death cases.
In personal injury cases, the limit for noneconomic damages is $300,000. In wrongful death cases, it's $250,000. Those are among the lowest in the nation. And in Kansas, punitive damages are hard to obtain for personal injury, and unattainable for wrongful death cases.
Bob Langdon, a prominent Missouri plaintiffs' attorney, said he prefers not to try cases in Kansas because the limits mean there's little to recover for clients and their lawyers after thousands of dollars are spent on trial experts.
"I'm not interested in practicing over there," Langdon said. "We practice cases all over the U.S. But not in places like that."
Because Schlitterbahn is a Texas company, Texas law could govern part or all of legal proceedings associated with Caleb's death. Texas in some instances doesn't go as far as Kansas in limiting the amounts that juries award.
But if Kansas law applies, the limitations on damages could make a settlement more likely.
A legal system geared more to resolution than truth-finding, combined with the state's minimal regulation of ride safety, puts in doubt the prospect of a public accounting of the accident.
The Kansas Department of Labor regulates rides at fixed amusement parks such as Schlitterbahn. But state law dictates that its job ends after checking paper records showing whether the owners paid for yearly inspections from qualified technicians, and trained employees to operate Verruckt.
"All we do is look at the records," said Barbara Hersh, a department spokeswoman. "Did they do their yearly inspections? Did they do their training on the people who are operating it?
"It's an audit. ... Just checking paperwork."
Forensic experts who study and often testify in lawsuits over thrill ride accidents speak confidently about the ability to pinpoint what goes wrong.
"The vast majority of the time we're able to figure out what happened," said Jamie Williams, a biomedical engineer and accident analyst with Robson Forensic in Lancaster, Pa. "With a complete forensic analysis, we should know completely."
She and two other forensic experts said in interviews that they would look for clues in the testing that took place in 2014 when the world's tallest water slide was built.
The tests run on the slide before it opened, they said, could begin to reveal any danger spots in its fundamental design or show whether how it was run for two years might have contributed to Caleb's death.
Those experts also said such cases often lead to new tests. In this case, that might involve running weighted rafts down the slide with accelerometers to better understand what could cause boats to become airborne or lose hold of their passengers.
In addition, the analysts would look for any video, witness statements and police reports. They would study the raft, looking especially at its hook-and-loop restraint belts and trying to determine its inflation levels at the time of the accident.
They would look over the slide, check its water flow rates, hunt for wear and tear, decipher its basic design.
Kansas City, Kan., police say they are focused on determining whether Caleb's death was a crime. If detectives conclude it was an accident, their work stops there _ without determining its cause.
Max Kautsch, a Lawrence lawyer who performs open records work for the Kansas Press Association, said state law allows for the release of fuller police records.
Kansas statutes allow police to keep some records from public view. But they also allow a court-ordered release of the records if they're "in the public interest," don't interfere with a criminal investigation or prosecution, don't reveal the identity of a confidential source, don't unveil confidential investigative techniques, wouldn't put someone in danger or identify the victim of a sex crime.
Kautsch said revealing more about the Schlitterbahn accident would clearly be in the public interes.
"This is the strongest case ever for the release of these documents," he said. "How could there possibly, possibly be a justification not to release these records?"
Attorneys for Caleb's family and the two women who were injured while riding with Caleb appear headed for litigation.
In statements this week, both sets of attorneys signaled that they were pursuing independent investigations.
