Estate of Drowned Washington Teen Files Oregon Lawsuit

July 26, 2013

The estate of a drowned Vancouver, Wash., teen has sued the organizers of a summer camp in Oregon, saying they endangered the boy.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland seeks $13 million.

The Columbian says the suit alleges that organizers of Experience the Valley Summer Camp were negligent in not requiring children to wear life jackets for swimming or walking near “dangerous bodies of water.”

It also alleges that camp organizers endangered 15-year-old Caleb Jordan Justice when they took him on a walk behind a waterfall on July 9, 2012, to go swimming in White River Falls near Maupin, Ore.

The boy slipped into the water and drowned. A camp counselor drowned trying to rescue him.

Justice was attending a weeklong camp as part of a youth group from River Rock Church in Camas, Wash.