The Idaho Supreme Court holds there is no relationship between signs posted on the side of the indoor trampoline park, and a duty owed to the injured plaintiff

The Plaintiff in attempting to do a triple front flip broke his neck. Plaintiff argued that the manual of the indoor trampoline park, and the signs on the walls created a duty on the part of the employees of the defendant to stop him from doing the flips.

Griffith v. Jumptime Meridian, LLC, 2017 Ida. LEXIS 90

State: Idaho, Supreme Court of Idaho

Plaintiff: Seth Griffith

Defendant: Jumptime Meridian, LLC

Plaintiff Claims: Negligence

Defendant Defenses: No Causation

Holding: For the Defendant

Year: 2017

This is a sad case; the 17-year-old plaintiff was injured attempting front flips at the defendants’ indoor trampoline park. The plaintiff went  there with his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s siblings. Eventually, the plaintiff ended up near a foam pit where you could land after attempting maneuvers on the trampoline. The pit was near where his girlfriend was located.

He had been performing several double flips successfully. At two different time’s employees of the defendant commented about his double flips. One said it was pretty cool and the other one said, “oh that was pretty sweet.” At no time, did anyone from the defendant admonished him to not to perform the flips he was doing. He was landing in the foam pit with his legs extended downward and on his butt, so he wouldn’t hit his face on his knees. Signs are on the wall said that the plaintiff could not land that way.

The plaintiff filed this complaint alleging that because he was under the age of 18, the defendant had a duty to supervise him. He could  show that the defendant’s written policy manual instructed employees to enforce the rules written on the walls of the defendants trampoline park in several places.

The defendant moved for summary judgment alleging that there was no relationship between the duty allegedly owned to the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s accident. In proving negligence one must prove duty, a breach the duty, an injury, and the injury was proximately caused by the breach of the duty.

The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, which was granted. The plaintiff appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court. Idaho does not have an intermediate appellate court.

Analysis: making sense of the law based on these facts.

The court first looked at the requirements under Idaho law to prove negligence.

The elements of common law negligence have been summarized as (1) a duty, recognized by law, requiring a defendant to conform to a certain standard of conduct; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) a causal connection between the defendant’s conduct and the resulting injuries; and (4) actual loss or damage.

The court then reviewed the actions of the plaintiff leading up to his injury. He did not tell anyone that is going to attempt to do the flip that caused his injury. Nor was any evidence introduced stating that the employee of the defendant could have or should have known that the plaintiff was going to do a triple flip. The plaintiff argued that he should be entitled to reasonable inference that if the defendant had enforced its rules when he was landing improperly, then he would have never attempted the triple flip.

…Plaintiff attempted the triple front flip. He did not tell anyone he was going to attempt it, nor is there any evidence indicating that the monitor knew or should have known that he would try a triple front flip. Plaintiff argues on appeal that he is “entitled to the reasonable inference that had JumpTime enforced its rules and interceded when [he] was landing improperly and dangerously on his back, [he] would not have felt emboldened and would never have attempted a triple flip.”

However, the court did not buy that argument. The court did find that there was no evidence that landing on your back was more dangerous than landing any other way. The plaintiff even testified that he felt safer to land the way he was because it avoided the risk of hitting his face of his knees.

Nor could the plaintiff prove or produce any evidence that he would’ve changed his actions if he had been admonished by an employee. Nothing in the record of the depositions of the plaintiff remotely suggested that idea.

The court simply held that there was no way the defendant could be responsible for the accident giving rise to his injury because it was solely the decision of the injured plaintiff.

Plaintiff’s testimony does not support an inference that JumpTime was in any way responsible for his decision to try the triple front flip. Therefore, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to JumpTime based upon the lack of evidence regarding causation.

So Now What?

Honestly, it takes a tough court to look at an injured plaintiff, possibly one wheelchair, and not want to award him some damages for his injuries. However, in this case the action of the plaintiff was such a stretch in trying to tie in his injury to something that the defendant had done.

What was of interest in this case was one of the arguments the plaintiff made saying that the signs on the wall describing to the patrons of the defendant how to land in the foam pit established a standard of care that was the defendant’s employee’s duty to monitor and enforce.

In response, Plaintiff contended that the signs on the wall stating how to land in the foam pit established the standard of care and that because of the attendant’s failure to admonish him for landing incorrectly, he was not discouraged from attempting a more difficult maneuver like a triple front flip.

Thankfully, the court did not buy this argument. It is a fine line we walk when we’re trying to train young employees and having them work with even younger patrons to keep safe. You write the rules, tell the employees to enforce the rules, but in some cases there is no way that you can guess what a patron is going to do. Here the plaintiff expected the defendant to guess what his actions would be and the court would not accept that.

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