A company has been fined £160,000 after a five-year-old boy suffered an eye injury when a model dinosaur fell over in a north London park and trapped the youngster under its tail.
The incident happened three days after the launch of the “Jurassic Encounter” event in summer 2021, when fifty life-sized animatronic models were installed in Grovelands Park in Southgate.
Organisers blamed the boy’s injury on other children interfering with the diplodocus before it toppled over, Highbury Corner magistrates court heard.
Visitors to the Jurassic Encounter, where family tickets cost £50 each, had been promised “unmissable family fun” and the chance to “walk among breathing, screeching, and roaring dinosaurs”.
But in the aftermath of the boy’s injury, Enfield Council officers unearthed a litany of health and safety flaws that put visitors in peril, including electronics exposed to the rain, “heavy” dinosaurs not properly tethered to the ground, staff shortages, and lax security that allowed children to climb on the models.
At court on Wednesday, the company behind the exhibition, Event 2020S Limited, was found guilty of three criminal charges brought under Health and Safety at Work laws.
Magistrates found there had been "cost-cutting at the expense of safety and deliberate frustration of attempts to get them to do what they should have been doing", and imposed a £160,000 fine plus £20,988 in costs and court fees.
The court heard Enfield Council leader Nesil Caliskan had warned of the dangers in an email to officers just before the exhibition opened, when she reported seeing “kids still climbing over dinosaurs and equipment” and event organisers were told to put on more marshalls.
Prosecutor Gordon Menzies told the court: "There were warnings of the risks before, but in any event the risks of children climbing on dinosaurs at an event predominantly aimed at families is an obvious one.
"This is a fly-by-night company more interested in profit than the safety of their youngest customers.
"Any initial cooperation with the local authority was motivated only by desire to keep the operation going, rather than out of any genuine desire to ensure the safety of the children who came to enjoy the event."
On the day of the accident, July 26, 2021, council worker Hakena Lasmi was a visitor to the Jurassic Experience with her children and saw the aftermath of the dinosaur model toppling over on to the boy.
“I heard a loud bang and rushed to the scene – a Diplodocus had hit the ground”, she said. “A mother was holding her child who was clearly distressed.”
She said the boy had a “small cut to their face and they said their leg hurt”.
In an incident report the event organisers stated: “The dinosaur was being moved by 4/5 young lads around the area in front of the family which resulted in the dinosaur falling over and striking the young boy.”
Ms Lasmi said a row broke out between the first aiders at the event and the family of the boy in the wake of the accident.
Victor Ktorakis, a council environmental health officer, was called in to investigate, and noticed the dinosaurs “looked quite tired with pieces of foam missing”.
He noted inadequate numbers of staff on site the day after the accident, signs telling visitors not to touch the models had gone missing or fallen over, and the cordons around the dinosaurs were too small.
Mr Ktorakis said a velociraptor near the entrance “wasn’t staked to the ground”, exposed metal was protruding from the tail of a Spinosaurus and hanging over the cordon – risking injury - and he also found the Diplodocus involved in the accident had been placed on a “slight slope”.
“Clearly it would be expected that such a large exhibit should have been placed on a flat surface. Its size and scale was such that its collapse could pose a risk of fatality”, said prosecutor Gordon Menzies.
Event organisers were told to improve the safety arrangements, but on a second inspection on August 2 Mr Ktorakis said he found problems remained including the 8m high T-Rex being held down only by a lump of concrete on one of the feet.
He recalled an angry confrontation with the company’s health and safety boss Julian Duncan after the site had been issued with an improvement notice and shut down for the day on August 4, 2021.
“He was very intimidating, he approached us, came very very close – within inches – and he was very upset and red-faced”, he said.
Mr Ktorakis said the site passed a second inspection on August 5, with increased numbers of security guards and marshalls, widened cordons around the dinosaurs, and extra ‘no entry’ signs.
But when a permanent shutdown notice was imposed the following day when Mr Ktokaris carried out an unscheduled visit, managing to break into the site unchallenged by security and observing low numbers of marshalls who spent their time talking on the phone.
“There were a lot of families with their children, and children being children they were picking up sticks in the wooded area and hitting the barrier ropes and the signs”, he said.
“At one point I recall a child dropped a stick behind the barrier and ducked under the barrier to retrieve it. The security guard did absolutely nothing.”
The court heard that in spite of the council’s prohibition notice, the Jurassic Encounter stayed open until its scheduled closure on August 10 2021.
The director of the company, David Lee, Mr Duncan, and operations manager Dylan Zheng are all said to have avoided the council’s investigation and failed to engage with criminal proceedings.
They were not in court, and Events 2020S Limited, which is listed to an address in Aldgate, was also not represented. The firm was convicted of putting visitors to the event at risk and two counts of contravening a council prohibition notice.
The hearing was told the company is in the process of being dissolved, while a personal injury claim is being pursued by the boy's family.
