The slide in your linked article resulting in a lawsuit was 12 feet tall. I recently played at a kids (something like 4-10) park that has a climbing feature that one can get to the top of that is a bit taller than that. It was fun but I was thinking the whole time, this could never go over in the USA.

https://goo.gl/maps/bF6bSSQ93SbUuHs96

An inflatable park company came to our town for a bit with a bunch of rides, one of which was a super high slide. I didn't understand why they were making us get into burlap sacks before going down, but I understood later - the speed near the bottom was high enough that I'm pretty sure I would've walked away with major burns if I'd touched the slide. My wife ended up with a mystery burn she noticed at the end of the day that I suspect came from this.

Obligatory xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/255/

Haha I wonder if this is the comment that I was remembering when I commented above!

Thanks for finding this for me, I was about to look for the same thing. It's interesting how memorable that comment is.