Three Lawsuits Say Riders Were Thrown OR Hurt on Hurricane Harbor Water Slides at Six Flags Great Adventure

Three lawsuits filed this year claim riders were thrown or injured on water slides at Hurricane Harbor, the water park at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson.

The suits were first filed in New Jersey state court and have since been moved to U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, federal court records show. Two of the plaintiffs filed in Camden County, Andrea Hare on April 23 and George Gall Jr. on July 12, and those cases reached federal court in August. The third suit, filed Aug. 19 by a New York woman on behalf of herself and her two children, was removed to federal court in late September.

The claims center on two slides. Hare's complaint, as described by Patch, alleges she was flung from a raft on the Big Bambu slide on July 17, 2025, after the raft went down a steep drop, and that she broke her right leg and was left with a disability. According to that account, the complaint alleges the ride was defective and blames improper maintenance, a lack of safety restraints, negligent operation by the ride attendant and a failure to warn riders of known hazards. Gall's complaint, according to news accounts of the filing, alleges he was thrown from a raft on the same slide in 2017, when he was a child; it does not specify his injuries. The third complaint, as described by Patch, alleges an inner tube flipped on the Tornado slide this past July and that the mother and her children suffered "serious and permanent" injuries because of negligence by park employees. These are allegations, and no court has ruled on them.

A Great Adventure spokesperson said the company does not comment on pending litigation. The cases are in their early stages in federal court.

The lawsuits are separate from a fatal roller coaster incident at another Six Flags park this week. Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, 42, of Atlanta, died Oct. 12 after he was ejected from the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, according to preliminary findings from Cobb County police, whose investigation is ongoing. Six Flags temporarily closed nine similar coasters at six parks in the U.S. and Canada, including Nitro at Great Adventure, "out of an abundance of caution," a company spokesperson said. No reopening date has been announced while the Georgia investigation continues.

Source: U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey dockets (Hare, Gall); Six Flags; Cobb County Police.

Photo: The Six Flags Great Adventure Resort entrance sign in Jackson, 2025 (file photo). Martin Lewison / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.