In the grocery store, a customer drops a grape on the ground. An old man trying to pick out oranges slips on it, and breaks his hip. Should that person have a right to sue the store? Or, say, in the same store a worker is clearly mopping, but forgot to setup cones... any idiot could have seen that the worker was mopping, but a customer fell, and sued.
Its a matter of trying to draw a line on where liability starts... and its sticky business. Like, going to the GYM today, say the equipment randomly breaks, and I get hurt? Do I have a right to sue the GYM (it was entirely NOT their fault, since the equipment was in good shape), or just the manufacturer of said faulty equipment? Its my reasonable assessment, that I shouldn't have a right to sue the GYM unless they were negligent, but in our system you could sue them anyway if no releases were signed stating otherwise (and often you sue them anyway).
In this case its pretty irresponsible to leave an open man hole unattended around the idiot general public, even for a moment... and, I even feel a little bad for the girl. The whole situation had to have been painful, dirty, and embarrassing... Especially while on the phone, I can see how someone could neglect to check for holes in the ground where they shouldn't be, and simply glance ahead to make sure he/she wasn't going to walk into something. Not understanding who to sue, is understandable (who was responsible for the workers?), and the for what? Well, what's this sort of neglegence called?
Meh. If it was my teenager I would let it go. Not because there isn't a legit case to sue, but mainly because that since she didn't get hurt (more than some scrapes and bruises perhaps), that there wouldn't be much to sue for, and the resulting court case would totally humiliate my daughter. The girl just made an innocent mistake, its her parents who are the fucking idiots.
What's the price on total nationwide humiliation these days?