I want the beach clean as much as the next guy, but can you provide information on one case in the past where someone was injured in flying beach items.
From NYTimes.com:
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: May 18, 2006
Photo: Phyllis Caliano-Bahaj and her lawyer, Devon Reiff, under an umbrella like the one that went airborne at Robert Moses State Park in 1999. Ms. Caliano-Bahaj, who says she has nerve damage, was awarded $200,000. (Photo by Tina Fineberg/Associated Press)
To anyone who has ever tried to hammer a beach umbrella into the sand and found it to be as hard as, well, building castles in the sand: Beware.
A Lower East Side woman has won a $200,000 settlement from the State of New York, almost seven years after the wind blew a beach umbrella into her head at Robert Moses State Park.
The woman, Phyllis Caliano-Bahaj, 53, said she was lounging on the beach on July 19, 1999, watching her son, Zachary, who was then 8, and three friends play in the sand when the weather turned stormy and gusty. A 6-foot, 15-pound striped umbrella that was either being used by a lifeguard or rented by a beach patron flew up and struck her in the forehead, ''like a torpedo,'' her lawyer said.
The resulting gash needed 13 stitches, and she was left with permanent nerve damage to her neck and persistent pain that forced her to ''tone down'' her athletic pursuits, Ms. Caliano-Bahaj said yesterday.
In a November 2003 decision, Judge S. Michael Nadel of the Court of Claims in Albany held the state fully responsible for the accident...
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Four weeks ago, I saw a big umbrella at Seaside go flying and tumbling down the beach at a rate of speed high enough to cause major damage and possibly death if it had hit one of the many people not running from its path. If the sharp wooden spike had hit someone, I would have hated to see what may have happened. Fortunately, no one was hurt. This wasn't the first umbrella I saw tumbling down the beach here in South Walton.