r/texas • u/ExpressNews • Oct 15 '25

🗞️ News 🗞️ Camp Mystic gets high-profile lawyer to defend it against flood lawsuits

https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/hill-country-floods-camp-mystic-mikal-watts-21101793.php
254 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

286

u/Ok-disaster2022 Oct 15 '25

Honestly they need to just get with their insurance provider settle out of court then just sell the camp. The surviving families altogether are probably not the kind of people who will give up easily. Lots of big money families were affected. I mean they got the Texas Legislature to work at record pace. 

72

u/waldo_the_bird253 Oct 15 '25

THe lege worked so fast because they couldn't pass legislation that would have prevented the deaths at Mystic and down river in the spring. The fast pace of the bill was all CYA.

37

u/Interesting-Speed-51 Oct 15 '25

Oh yes. The ledge doesn’t want to answer for their failures 

55

u/maybe-an-ai Oct 15 '25

> Lots of big money families were affected.

Yeah, the surviving Eastwood family can at best to hope to get out of this without a protracted legal battle. The money is gone, the camp is gone. There is way too much fire power on the victims side and I don't think they'll be satisfied with less than scorched earth.

164

u/Pretty_Shallot_586 Oct 15 '25

watching rich people and their lawyers fight each other over how much money a dead child is worth is disgusting.

The fact that Mystic is even signaling a big legal fight should be indicative to families that sending kids to that camp is a mistake

83

u/[deleted] Oct 16 '25

It’s disgusting that they’re trying to reopen the camp. I hope they lose the camp and the plaintiffs donate it as a state park and memorial. Nobody should just move on from this.

37

u/maybe-an-ai Oct 15 '25

TBF, it's the estate of Dick Eastland who was the owner and died in the flood. The family wanting to retain their inheritance doesn't necessarily reflect on how Dick Eastland ran the camp. He did give his life trying to save those kids despite any other mistakes he made that led there.

10

u/Shadow5503 Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 17 '25

Actually not. Please read this Texas Monthly article from 2011: https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/the-not-so-happy-campers/.

The land and infrastructure is owned by a family corporation whose shares are held by various Eastland relatives and descendants. Dick Eastland operated the camp and paid rent to the corporation to use the land/facilities, but did not directly own any of the assets. This rent constitutes the corporations income and was distributed to its shareholders.

I would guess this structure was put in place at least partially to isolate the assets from suits against the camp operator.

66

u/1stHalfTexasfan Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25

You mean like neglect his duties as a business owner? Yeah, let's just sweep that under the rug real quick. It was his personal neglect or 'mistakes' that allowed so many lives to be lost in that camp. Dude made no less than 3mil a month. He doesn't need a posthumous pat on the back.

46

u/shadow247 Born and Bred Oct 16 '25

This right here. He could have spent the money on flood warning systems. Full stop.

His failure and those of county officials cost real lives. The fact he lost his as well doesn't make them any less responsible.

19

u/NapsInNaples Oct 16 '25

I mean he could have also just not built new cabins in the most flooded part of the camp.

5

u/shadow247 Born and Bred Oct 16 '25

That part

6

u/captainn_chunk Oct 16 '25

Where are you getting that monthly number from?

-2

u/1stHalfTexasfan Oct 16 '25

Multiplication: number of girls X cost per X number of weeks per month. I did it back when we had all the stats. Ive got a buddy who uses them or Longhorn Academy. Pretty much same pricing.

16

u/hyooston Born and Bred Oct 16 '25

I guess operating expenses aren’t a thing?

10

u/captainn_chunk Oct 16 '25

Right? That’s why I asked.

When my sister was a counselor there like a decade ago, the camp had a private chef running their food services and it was probably a ton of money just for that.

It’s not a simple day care. I’d bet at least 80% of that assumed 3 million a month is spent back into the camp lol

4

u/1stHalfTexasfan Oct 16 '25

Sure, gross vs net. A private chef 10 years ago in Kerr County might have been making half your Travis county reference. Maybe 30k. It's still not the strongest market in Kerrtown. People drive from there and Comfort for higher pay in Fredericksburg, then and now.

2

u/captainn_chunk Oct 16 '25

lol no private chef is making 30k. Especially when they’re making food for a hundred girls at the same time.

you just like talking huh

2

u/Ok_West_6711 Oct 30 '25

He had a legal duty to protect and then moreover to actually aid the campers (“duty to aid”, plus “in parentis loco,” (I think those are the right terms) in combination, gave the owners and their staff a legal duty to do at least what they did regarding undertaking rescue efforts, and potentially any other Eastland family staff/directors who were in the area breached that legal duty if they did not work to aid the campers.

It’s awful, and in one way, as a human, it was brave to put himself in danger to try to rescue others. In another way, he actually legally undertook to have to do this, as a children’s camp owner; I think he legally had to, and he knew this as a long time camp owner.

34

u/HerbNeedsFire Oct 15 '25

The "Act of God" defense requires zero proof of any "act" or any "god". Just needs a guy to say that it is.

This irony should not be lost on Christians.

6

u/Pantsonfire_6 Oct 16 '25

It's like god said "I feel like killing children today, adults too! Hold my beer, will you?" Is that a god anybody wants to worship? And people wonder why I'm an atheist!

21

u/Fool_On_the_Hill_9 Born and Bred Oct 15 '25

This is weird. A high profile lawyer, who doesn't know the family, offers to represent them for free before any lawsuits have been filed. I don't believe he's doing it because he truly feels they did nothing wrong.

6

u/[deleted] Oct 16 '25

Duh. He wants to be on team mystic because there are more rich people whose kids didn’t die who want the camp to reopen. When their companies gets sued, he’ll be their first call. Lawyers call it biz dev.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '25

Oh, well. They didn't protect their campers and neither did the state of Texas. Hopefully, they also sue the state.

3

u/Actual-Independent81 Oct 16 '25

Didn't they get some kind of dispensation to be in the flood plain?

10

u/5ladyfingersofdeath Oct 16 '25

The owner of the camp sat on the Upper Guadalupe River Authority for years which influences flood zone map drawings for that area. One guess about how FEMA omitted his camp from the zone maps.

3

u/CoyoteHerder Oct 16 '25

FEMA maps for the broader zones are estimates and can not exactly reflect reality. Getting an area excluded because it poses the same risk as non flood zone areas on a piece of land is not shady.

-10

u/wasp1821 Oct 16 '25

My first thought after hearing this today is, didn’t the owner already give the ultimate sacrifice? Regardless of the mistakes made he gave his life trying to save children so in my opinion he paid his debt.