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(WCCO) Abigail Taylor doesn't complain about the tubes in her stomach and chest. She doesn't whine because she can only eat a quarter cup of food at a time. She doesn't even talk about the fact she can't go in the water any more.

However, what amazes her parents more about their 6-year-old little girl is what she said to her classmates when they asked her why her skin is yellow.

"She said, just remember when you talk about other people, it hurts their feelings. And I know you don't want to hurt their feelings, so just don't do it," said Abigail's mom, Katey Taylor.

Abigail is jaundiced because of the damage to her liver. That's from the total parenteral nutrition, which is a tube that administers vitamins into her bloodstream through her chest. She had not been able to eat or drink normally since the accident and likely never will.

On June 29, 2006, Abigail was playing the kiddie pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club in St. Louis Park when she sat on a drain with no cover. The suction caused a tear in her rectum and disemboweled her by pulling out almost all of her small intestine.

Her parents said she hardly talks about that day, but still remembers it with almost crystal clarity.

According to a lawsuit filed by her parents on Tuesday, the drain cover in the kiddie pool had become loose before 7 p.m. that night.

A boy was hurt when he cut himself on a rusty screw coming from the detached cover and a pool patron found the cover at the bottom of the pool. Lifeguards did not shut down the pool, as required by state law.

"Yes, shut the pool off when the cover comes off, but why is the cover coming off?" asked the Taylor's lawyer, Bob Bennett, on Thursday. He is suing the Minneapolis Golf Club and Sta-Rite, the Delavan, Wis. company that manufactured the pool pump and drain.

Bennett said Sta-Rite, now owned by Pentair, Inc., knew their pumps carried the risk of evisceration and did not take any steps to eliminate the danger.

He pointed to three cases were children were seriously injured when a Sta-Rite cover became detached. He also referenced memos from the company that found "warning labels, alone, are insufficient is product can be designed and manufactured to be more safe."

For detailed information, read the lawsuit here.

"They kept in production a product that was defective, a product they knew to be defective," he said.

However, in a written statement released Thursday, Pentair said the lawsuit is "without merit" and blames the Minneapolis Golf Club.

"This incident was caused by the Club's long list of errors, including misuse of pool products, inadequate site supervision and improper maintenance," the statement read.

More specifically, Pentair said the Club improperly secured the cover to the drain when it used the wrong screws and frame to save time and expense.

For more detailed information, read their statement here.

Gretchen Koehn, President of the Minneapolis Golf Club, said in a statement, "Our primary concern is about Abigail's health and her recovery. We hope the legal matters can be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties involved as quickly as possible."

Abigail will need a rare small intestine transplant within the next two years. The Taylors have looked into donor programs in Omaha and Pittsburgh.

To get on the transplant list, she must be able to get to either hospital within six hours. Her family is asking corporations for access to their private jets to take Abigail to the hospital when they're ready for the surgery.

"The bottom line is, I guess, she is doing fine. But she's not getting better. She's getting worse. Her health is deteriorating," said her father, Scott Taylor.

Abigail's doctor bills are piling up and by the middle of 2008, her family's insurance is expected to run out. Because she will require daily medical care for the rest of her life, her family estimates her lifetime medical and living expenses will be more than $30,000,000. Her family worries about how they will be able to pay.

"There's a tremendous amount of cost that has already been incurred by the family, by our family, but they are miniscule in comparison in what we're looking at going forward," said Scott Taylor.

However, he said, that's only one of the reasons he spoke out on Thursday. He said he never wants an accident like this to happen again.

"She can't just be Abigail Taylor anymore. She can't just go ride a bike and just go and she can't just go to a friend's house for a play date. She has to have supervision, a nurse with at all times, or one of us," he said. "It's certainly taken away some of her childhood."

 

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