A company made a crisis worse with a single sentence. I still think about it.
Some of you may remember an 11-year-old slipped off a zipline at an indoor adventure park in Scarborough. He was okay — bruised, shaken, no lasting damage. The company had a clear window to respond like human beings. Here’s what they chose instead:
“We are aware of the incident and it is currently under review with our insurers and legal counsel. Given that this involves a minor, we are not providing interviews or comments at this time.”
OK now… stop for a second. Seriously…
“Under review with our insurers.”
This is Jeff writing this, not AI but seriously… at the risk of sounding like an AI bot: “Let that sink in.” If that doesn’t make you shiver, there’s something wrong with you.
Read that as a parent reads it. Not as a communications professional. As the parent of the kid who just came home from the hospital.
That sentence tells you exactly where the company’s head was. It wasn’t with you… it wasn’t with your child, or your family. It was with their… deductible!?
What happened next was predictable. The family’s belongings were still at the facility when they rushed to the hospital. Nobody from the company called to check on the child. Not that night. Not the next morning. Just that statement, and then silence.
Here’s the thing: they thought they were being careful. That “insurers and legal counsel” signaled responsibility. That saying nothing was safer than saying something wrong. Every part of that calculation was backwards.
That statement didn’t reduce their legal exposure. It INCREASED it — because it told a family their child was a liability line item.
A plaintiff’s attorney reads “under review with our insurers” and sees a gift. It’s basically a written confession that your first thought was the lawsuit, not the people.
The fix costs nothing. Call the family. Check on the child. Say sorry like you mean it. Talk about safety, not insurance. Be a business that acts like it cares whether kids leave your facility the same way they came in.
That’s it. But no…. they chose the harder path.
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