A Travis County judge is expected to decide Wednesday if Camp Mystic and its owners can resolve five wrongful death lawsuits out of court, through arbitration.
More than a dozen families are suing the all-girls Christian summer camp after last July's catastrophic Hill Country flood tore through its grounds, killing 27 campers and counselors. The families allege camp leaders failed to evacuate campers and counselors despite worsening flood conditions, resulting in their daughters' deaths.
Jury trials for all five cases have been scheduled for next year. But Camp Mystic argues the cases should be decided out of court by a qualified arbitrator, citing a "binding arbitration" provision in an agreement families signed when registering their daughters for camp.
These agreements also highlighted various risks associated with attending summer camp, including "the risk of 'floods,' risks caused by 'errors of judgement,' and those caused by 'careless conduct,' which the agreements warn 'in extraordinary cases, may be serious,'" according to the camp's request for arbitration.
The camp originally filed motions requesting arbitration on March 24. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble was set to decide the issue on May 13. However, just hours before the hearing, the camp withdrew its original motions and re-filed amended ones. The move drew criticism from both Gamble and the families' attorneys.
"What I don't like is the last second notice. I especially don't like it when I think I know what's going on," Gamble, who'd been prepared to rule on the matter, said.
Will and CiCi Steward's 8-year-old daughter, Cile, remains missing after last July's flood. Their legal team has since filed a motion asking Gamble to impose sanctions on Camp Mystic, including striking the camp's amended request for arbitration — arguing it had engaged in "bad-faith litigation conduct."
According the Stewards' filing, Camp Mystic "induced Plaintiffs to expend significant resources opposing their motion to compel arbitration, withdrew it in defiance of this Court's directive on the eve of the specially set hearing ... and then refiled the same motion after reviewing Plaintiffs' responses."
Two other legal teams representing Camp Mystic families have also since filed a joint motion asking Gamble to strike Camp Mystic's amended request for arbitration.
In their filing, they claim Camp Mystic was "unwilling" to argue its original motions to compel arbitration on May 13 because "they knew those motions would fail." The families also said "such manipulative maneuvers" warrant striking the camp's amended motions.
The families also claim Camp Mystic has "waived any right to arbitration by expressing their intention to litigate in open court and engaging in litigation conduct for months before pivoting to arbitration after an unfavorable temporary injunction ruling."
Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, has been following the cases. He said there's another reason why Gamble might rule against moving the cases to arbitration: public interest.
"The problem with arbitration is it isn't usually in open court. It isn't before a jury of fact finders, it's very much private," he said. "I think it is imperative to have the case tried in a courtroom with a jury of fact finders and a judge for reasons that have to do with what happened, and so that everybody knows as best they can what happened and what the facts are."
Tobias said cases like these often prompt lots of questions.
"What does it mean to injure somebody else? What does it mean to be injured yourself?" he said. "No one wants to hurt somebody else, right? But it happened, and so the best we can do is, you know, try to make good on what happens in those situations, try to prevent them in the future."
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