Plaintiff loses because experts could not prove his claims against a camp used for a football camp.
Posted: May 21, 2018 Filed under: New York, Pennsylvania, Summer Camp, Youth Camps | Tags: ACA, Adult, American Camp Association, breached, building code, bunk, Cabin, Coach, constructive notice, cross-claims, engaging, Expert Witness, fellow, fighting, Football Camp, glass, hazardous, high school, horseplay, individual capacity, Infant, inter alia, Leader, negligent supervision, Notice, safety glass, severed, speculative, spontaneous, sudden, Summary judgment, Summer Camp, supervising, Supervision, window Leave a commentACA trained expert witness was hired by injured plaintiff to prove a claim against a summer camp. Again, camp money is used to train expert who then is used against the camp.
Staten Et. Al. v. The City of New York Et. Al., 2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 4257; 2013 NY Slip Op 32252(U)
State: New York, Supreme Court of New York, Richmond County
Plaintiff: Marvin Staten, an Infant Over the Age of 14 years by his Parent and Natural Guardian Cassandra Dozier and Cassandra Dozier, Individually
Defendant: The City of New York, The New York City Department of Education, Camp Chen-A-Wanda, Inc., Louis Cintron, Sr., Louis Cintron, Jr., an infant over the age of 14 years by his Parent and Natural Guardian, Louis Cintron, Sr., Barbara Rose Cintron and Louis Cintron, Jr. an infant over the age of 14 years by his Parent and Natural guardian, Barbara Rose Cintron, Defendants
Plaintiff Claims: Negligent supervision and maintenance of the premises
Defendant Defenses:
Holding: For the defendant Camp
Year: 2013
Summary
American Camp Association (ACA) trained expert witness used ACA material to try and prove the summer camp was liable for the injuries of a camper. The summer camp had passed the duty to control the kids to the school district that had rented the camp and as such was not liable.
To be able to sue for emotional damages under New York law, the parent must have financial damages also. Lacking that, the mother’s claims were dismissed.
Facts
This ruling is the result of several motions filed by different parties and can be confusing.
The minors were at a summer week long football camp. The camp was rented by the defendant New York Department of Education. The camp, Camp Chen-A-Wanda, Inc., was located in Pennsylvania.
The plaintiff was looking through the cabin window where he was bunking to see if anyone was messing with his stuff. The defendant minor punched the plaintiff through the window, injuring the plaintiff with the broken glass from the window. The plaintiff’s expert identified this action as horseplay?
At his deposition, plaintiff testified that shortly after dinner on the date of the accident, he was standing outside his cabin, looking in through a window to “see if anybody was messing around with [his] stuff” when, after a few seconds, defendant Cintron “punched [through] the glass”
The defendant minor had been disciplined before by the school district for fighting.
There was a written agreement between the Defendant Camp and the school district, where the school district agreed to provide one adult (person over age 19) per cabin. In the cabin where the incident took place, the supervisors were two seniors, one of whom was the defendant minor.
The agreement gave control of the people at the camp, including campers to the school district renting the facilities.
This is the decision concerning the various motions.
Analysis: making sense of the law based on these facts.
The camp filed a motion for summary judgment arguing:
(1) it owed no duty to supervise plaintiff or to otherwise protect him from horseplay; (2) no facts have been adduced in support of plaintiffs’ claim that the subject window constituted a “defective condition”; and (3) since the proximate cause of the accident was the sudden, unanticipated independent actions of Cintron (i.e., punching the glass), the Camp cannot be found liable for plaintiff’s injury.
The plaintiff argued the camp was negligent and negligent per se. The negligence per se claim was based on a regulation that required safety glass to be used in windows of bunkhouses. The plaintiff also argued the camp was negligent for failing to exercise risk management and supervise the campers.
I’ve never seen a claim that it was negligent to fail to exercise risk management.
The expert hired by the plaintiff had “44 years in the camping industry and a co-author of the American Camp Association’s ‘2006 Camp Accreditation Process Guide’.” However, the court found the testimony of the expert was conclusory and insufficient to raise a question of fact.
…”conclusory testimony” offered by plaintiff’s expert was “insufficient to raise a question of fact as to whether [the Camp] breached its duty to maintain[] [its] property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the in-jury, and the burden of avoiding the risk” and, further, that the failure of plaintiff’s expert to quote any “authority, treatise [or] standard” in support thereof rendered his ultimate opinion speculative and/or “unsupported by any evidentiary foundation…[sufficient] to withstand summary judgment.
The basis of the plaintiff’s expert witness testimony was based on the 2006 American Camp Association Accreditation Process Guide. However, he failed to demonstrate how, where or when the guide had “been accepted as an authoritative reference work in any court of law, or its applicability to a camp constructed in the 1940s.”
The court also found the expert witnesses reliance on the building codes was misplaced because the camp had been built thirty years prior to the creation of the building code.
The court then stated, “the Camp’s motion for summary judgment is granted, and the complaint and any cross claims as against this defendant are hereby severed and dismissed.”
The court then looked at the cities (New York’s) motions. The court found the duty to supervise the youth was contractually assumed by the city in its contract with the camp. The school also had knowledge of the propensity of the defendant minor to get in fights.
In this regard, actual or constructive notice to the school of prior similar conduct is generally required, since school personnel cannot be reasonably expected to guard against all of the sudden and spontaneous acts that take place among students on a daily basis
The it was foreseeable the fight could occur.
The plaintiff’s mothers claim against the city were dismissed.
However, it is well settled that a parent cannot recover for the loss of society and companionship of a child who was negligently injured, while a claim for the loss of a child’s services must be capable of monetarization in order to be compensable. Here, plaintiff’s mother has offered no proof of the value of any services rendered to her by her son. As a result, so much of the complaint as seeks an award of damages in her individual capacity for the loss of her son’s services must be severed and dismissed.
The defendant camp was dismissed from the lawsuit. The mother’s claims were dismissed from the lawsuit because she could not prove actual damages, only emotional damages, which are not a cause of action in New York.
So Now What?
Here again an ACA trained expert witness tries to use ACA material to prove a camp is negligent. The expert would have been successful if he had better training as an expert witness and knew had to get his guide into evidence.
There are great organizations doing great things for their membership. ACA is one of those organizations. However, like others, the attempt to help their membership be better is making their lives in court a living hell.
What would you think if the person sitting across from you being deposed or on the witness stand says you are a crummy operation and negligent. And you know that your association money went into training him and creating the documents he is using to prove you were negligent.
The final issue is many states are reducing or eliminating who can sue for emotional damages when they witness or are relatives of the plaintiff. Here New York has said you can’t sue for emotional damages for the injury your child received if you don’t have financial damages in the game also.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
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By Recreation Law Rec-law@recreation-law.com James H. Moss
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Expert testimony is needed when the activity is beyond the scope of the general knowledge of a juror in Connecticut.
Posted: May 7, 2018 Filed under: Connecticut, Equine Activities (Horses, Donkeys, Mules) & Animals | Tags: ACA, American Camp Association, Diversity, equestrian, expert testimony, Expert Witness, expertise, familiarity, horseback riding, horsemanship, issues of material fact, juror, Membership, Pony, qualification, resume, specialized knowledge, Standard of Care, state law, Summary judgment Leave a commentIn this case, the plaintiff’s claim failed because they needed any expert witness and the one they had hired was disqualified. Without an expert in horseback riding lessons, the plaintiff’s claims were dismissed.
Ellis v. YMCA Camp Mohawk, Inc., 615 Fed. Appx. 697; 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 16057
State: Connecticut, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Plaintiff: Louisa R. Ellis, ppa Elizabeth Ellis, Elizabeth Ellis
Defendant: YMCA Camp Mohawk, Inc.
Plaintiff Claims: Negligence
Defendant Defenses:
Holding: For the Defendant
Year: 2015
Summary
Your expert witness must have the experience, education or background to be able to testify as to their findings. In states where an expert opinion is needed, like Connecticut, not having an expert means not have a case.
Here the expert witness hired by the plaintiff did not have the necessary qualifications, and the court would not allow his testimony. Because horseback riding and equine issues were outside of the scope of the normal juror in Connecticut, an expert witness was needed by the plaintiff. Without an expert, the plaintiff’s case was dismissed.
Facts
On July 18, 2011, Louisa Ellis fell from a pony while taking horseback riding lessons at YMCA Camp Mohawk. Ellis sustained injuries to her hand and elbow that required surgery and therapy. Appellants identified Andres, an employee of Robson Forensic, to investigate the claims and to provide expert testimony.
The plaintiff’s hired an expert witness to provide expert testimony on why the defendant was negligent. The court found the plaintiff’s expert was not qualified to render an expert opinion on the matter.
… Corey Andres, was not qualified to render an expert opinion regarding the standard of care for an equestrian course at the YMCA camp at which twelve-year-old Louisa was injured.
The trial court dismissed the plaintiff’s case because they could not prove their case.
The district court excluded Andres’s expert testimony on the ground that he had limited experience in the field of horseback riding. Therefore, appellants’ failure to produce an expert where expert testimony was required led the district court to grant summary judgment.
The plaintiffs appealed.
Analysis: making sense of the law based on these facts.
Although the case was brought in the federal district court because the parties were from different states, the law of the state where the accident happened was the law used in the case. Since the accident occurred in Connecticut, Connecticut law was applied to the case.
Under Connecticut law, horseback riding was outside the general knowledge of jurors and thus required expert testimony for the jurors to make their decisions.
Connecticut courts have held, on similar facts, that the general public is no longer as familiar with horsemanship as it arguably was at the beginning of the twentieth century, and that expert testimony is necessary to establish a standard of care and a breach of that standard.
An expert witness is needed to show both the standard of care in the case and whether the defendant breached that standard of care.
The plaintiff hired Andres, an employee of Robson Forensic.
Andres claimed his expertise based on his membership in the American Camp Association (“ACA”) and his study of therapeutic education at Ohio State, University of Toledo, including a study pertaining to equestrian matters. Andres’s investigation concluded that YMCA was negligent in failing to provide complete and proper instruction as to how to fall from a horse in a way that minimizes injury.
The district court excluded “Andres’s expert testimony on the ground that he had limited experience in the field of horseback riding.”
The district stated, and the appellate court agreed that:
Andres does not rise to the level of expertise required to opine on the matters at hand. Andres has practically no knowledge or experience relating to horsemanship — his resume makes no reference to any such knowledge, and his investigation merely points to three publications that he relied on when preparing his report. Andres’s resume instead highlights a wide array of fields and organizations in which he has obtained certifications or is a member. Appellants argue that Andres’s membership in the ACA broadly reaches all camp recreations. This broad qualification falls well short of the specialized knowledge that Federal Rule of Evidence 702 demands. The district court therefore did not abuse its discretion in its decision to exclude Andres’s testimony.
Because the plaintiff’s expert witness was excluded and could not testify, the plaintiffs could not prove their case.
Appellants’ failure to provide necessary expert testimony precludes them from presenting these claims under Connecticut state law. Thus, there are no issues of material fact raised to challenge the district court’s entry of summary judgment.
So Now What?
The courts have been given broader discretion to determine who can and cannot testify as an expert witness. The courts can also determine, even if the expert is qualified to testify, that the testimony they are going to give is not based on science.
In states where expert testimony is required or any state where you want to win, you need to hire expert witnesses who are going to qualify as an expert in their field and provide an opinion based on science, history, experience and real life.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
Copyright 2018 Recreation Law (720) 334 8529
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Author: Outdoor Recreation Insurance, Risk Management and Law
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By Recreation Law Rec-law@recreation-law.com James H. Moss
#AdventureTourism, #AdventureTravelLaw, #AdventureTravelLawyer, #AttorneyatLaw, #Backpacking, #BicyclingLaw, #Camps, #ChallengeCourse, #ChallengeCourseLaw, #ChallengeCourseLawyer, #CyclingLaw, #FitnessLaw, #FitnessLawyer, #Hiking, #HumanPowered, #HumanPoweredRecreation, #IceClimbing, #JamesHMoss, #JimMoss, #Law, #Mountaineering, #Negligence, #OutdoorLaw, #OutdoorRecreationLaw, #OutsideLaw, #OutsideLawyer, #RecLaw, #Rec-Law, #RecLawBlog, #Rec-LawBlog, #RecLawyer, #RecreationalLawyer, #RecreationLaw, #RecreationLawBlog, #RecreationLawcom, #Recreation-Lawcom, #Recreation-Law.com, #RiskManagement, #RockClimbing, #RockClimbingLawyer, #RopesCourse, #RopesCourseLawyer, #SkiAreas, #Skiing, #SkiLaw, #Snowboarding, #SummerCamp, #Tourism, #TravelLaw, #YouthCamps, #ZipLineLawyer, #RecreationLaw, #OutdoorLaw, #OutdoorRecreationLaw, #SkiLaw,
Staten Et. Al. v. The City of New York Et. Al., 2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 4257; 2013 NY Slip Op 32252(U)
Posted: April 17, 2018 Filed under: Legal Case, Minors, Youth, Children, New York, Summer Camp, Youth Camps | Tags: ACA, Adult, American Camp Association, breached, building code, bunk, Cabin, Coach, constructive notice, cross-claims, engaging, fellow, fighting, Football Camp, glass, hazardous, high school, horseplay, individual capacity, Infant, inter alia, Leader, negligent supervision, Notice, safety glass, severed, speculative, spontaneous, sudden, Summary judgment, Summer Camp, supervising, Supervision, window, Youth Camp Leave a commentStaten Et. Al. v. The City of New York Et. Al., 2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 4257; 2013 NY Slip Op 32252(U)
[**1] Marvin Staten, an Infant Over the Age of 14 years by his Parent and Natural Guardian Cassandra Dozier and Cassandra Dozier, Individually, Plaintiffs, -against- The City of New York, The New York City Department of Education, Camp Chen-A-Wanda, Inc., Louis Cintron, Sr., Louis Cintron, Jr., an infant over the age of 14 years by his Parent and Natural Guardian, Louis Cintron, Sr., Barbara Rose Cintron and Louis Cintron, Jr. an infant over the age of 14 years by his Parent and Natural guardian, Barbara Rose Cintron, Defendants.
Index No. 104585/07
SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, RICHMOND COUNTY
2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 4257; 2013 NY Slip Op 32252(U)
August 18, 2013, Decided
NOTICE: THIS OPINION IS UNCORRECTED AND WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED IN THE PRINTED OFFICIAL REPORTS
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY: Affirmed in part and reversed in part by, Summary judgment granted by, Dismissed by, in part Staten v. City of New York, 2015 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3334 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep’t, Apr. 22, 2015)
PRIOR HISTORY: Staten v. City of New York, 90 A.D.3d 893, 935 N.Y.S.2d 80, 2011 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 9134 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep’t, 2011)
CORE TERMS: window, glass, summary judgment, inter alia, bunk, high school, supervision, severed, horseplay, cabin, spontaneous, hazardous, engaging, breached, sudden, coach, adult, individual capacity, safety glass, building code, constructive notice, supervising, speculative, fighting, infant, fellow, leader, notice, cross claims, negligent supervision
JUDGES: [*1] Present: HON. THOMAS P. ALIOTTA
OPINION BY: THOMAS P. ALIOTTA
OPINION
DECISION AND ORDER
[**2] Upon the foregoing papers, the motion for summary judgment (No. 1415-005) of defendant Camp Chen-A-Wanda, Inc. (hereinafter the “Camp”) is granted; the cross motion for summary judgment (No. 1471-006) of defendants The City of New York and The New York City Department of Education (hereinafter “City”) is granted to the extent of dismissing the claims of the individual plaintiff, Cassandra Dozier. The balance of the cross motion is denied.
This matter arises out of an incident which occurred on August 25, 2007 at the Camp’s premises in Pennsylvania, where the infant plaintiff, Marvin Staten (hereinafter “plaintiff”) was enrolled in a week-long football camp with the balance of his high school football team. Plaintiff, who was entering his sophomore year at Tottenville High School on Staten Island, claims to have sustained extensive injuries to his left eye when he was struck by glass from a window pane which had allegedly been broken by a punch thrown by defendant and fellow teammate, Louis Cintron, Jr. (hereinafter “Cintron”). It appears undisputed that the window broke while plaintiff and/or Cintron were engaging in [*2] “horseplay.”
At his deposition, plaintiff testified that shortly after dinner on the date of the accident, he was standing outside his cabin, looking in through a window at eye-level to “see if anybody was messing around with [his] stuff” when, after a few seconds, defendant Cintron “punched [through] the glass” (see Plaintiff’s March 27, 2009 EBT, pp 70-71; Camp’s Exhibit F). No criminal charges were filed against plaintiff’s teammate, who was, however, dismissed from the camp, “cut” from his high school team, and suspended from Tottenville High School following the incident.
The claims against the Camp and the City are grounded in allegations of negligent supervision and maintenance of the premises where the incident occurred (see Plaintiffs’ Amended Verified Complaint, Camp’s Exhibit A, para “Thirty-Sixth”).
[**3] It is noted that prior to this incident, i.e., on February 14, 2006, Cintron had been disciplined by Tottenville High School for engaging in disruptive conduct with another student (see City’s Exhibit I; see also Staten v. City of New York, 90 AD3d 893, 935 N.Y.S.2d 80). It is likewise noted that pursuant to a written contract drawn on Camp Chen-A-Wanda letterhead, dated and signed August 20, [*3] 2007, Tottenville High School coach Jim Munson agreed that “each bunk will be supervised by a coach, former player, or other adult who is at least nineteen years of age” (see City’s Exhibit C). To the extent relevant, the bunk “leaders” supervising plaintiff’s bunk were two seniors, one of whom was defendant Cintron.
In moving for summary judgment, Camp argues, inter alia, that: (1) it owed no duty to supervise plaintiff or to otherwise protect him from horseplay; (2) no facts have been adduced in support of plaintiffs’ claim that the subject window constituted a “defective condition”; and (3) since the proximate cause of the accident was the sudden, unanticipated independent actions of Cintron (i.e., punching the glass), the Camp cannot be found liable for plaintiff’s injury.
In opposition to the motion, plaintiff alleges, inter alia, that not only was the Camp negligent in its maintenance of the premises, but that it was negligent: (1) per se in using ordinary or “annealed” glass for the cabin windows rather than safety glass, in violation of Pennsylvania State and International Building Codes (see June 12, 2013 affidavit of Plaintiff’s Expert, Michael J. Peterson, Plaintiff’s Exhibit [*4] H); (2) in failing to properly exercise risk management, and (3) in failing to supervise its post-season campers and protect them against horseplay. Plaintiff further argues that while Cintron’s actions might be considered “intervening,” his conduct was not a superseding cause of the accident. Notably, plaintiff submits the affidavit of Michael J. Peterson (see Plaintiffs’ Exhibit H), an “expert with 44 years in the camping industry and a co-author of the American Camp Association’s ‘2006 Camp Accreditation Process Guide'” (see Plaintiffs’ [**4] Memorandum of Law), who opined, inter alia, “with a reasonable degree of professional certainty of the camping industry…that [the Camp] should have begun and completed replacement of all non-reinforced glass in hazardous or even marginally hazardous locations within [its] camp with safety impact rated glass, plexi glass (plastic),…safety film, or…reinforced…small gauge hardware cloth wire a full two decades before this accident.” The expert further opined that had these steps been taken, the punch “would not [have] shattered safety impact rated glass, plexi-glass, glass covered with safety film or reinforced glass” (id.).
As previously indicated, [*5] the Camp’s motion for summary judgment is granted, and the complaint and any cross claims as against this defendant are hereby severed and dismissed.
In the opinion of this Court, it is constrained by the 2005 decision of the Court of Appeals in Buchholz v. Trump 767 Fifth Avenue, (5 NY3d 1, 831 N.E.2d 960, 798 N.Y.S.2d 715) to hold that the “conclusory testimony” offered by plaintiff’s expert was “insufficient to raise a question of fact as to whether [the Camp] breached its duty to maintain[] [its] property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden of avoiding the risk” and, further, that the failure of plaintiff’s expert to quote any “authority, treatise [or] standard” in support thereof rendered his ultimate opinion speculative and/or “unsupported by any evidentiary foundation…[sufficient] to withstand summary judgment (id. at 9 [internal quotation marks omitted]; see Diaz v. New York Downtown Hosp., 99 NY2d 542, 544, 784 N.E.2d 68, 754 N.Y.S.2d 195).1
1 The decedent in Buchholz was pushed and fell through an office window after engaging in “play fighting” with three co-workers following their attendance at a St. Patrick’s Day Parade [*6] in 1999 (id. at 4). Plaintiff alleged that the premises’ owner was negligent, inter alia, in failing to furnish shatterproof glass windows and a safety rail across the window’s face in contravention of certain sections of the New York City Administrative Code, particularly §27-651 (“Panels subject to human impact loads”). Plaintiff’s expert, a registered architect and licensed engineer, submitted an affidavit opining that the window’s very low sill was problematic, and further, that “good and accepted engineering and building safety practices dictated that a protective barrier bar be installed” (id. at 6). Nevertheless, the trial court’s denial of the owner’s summary judgment motion was reversed on appeal (see Buchholz v. Trump 767 Fifth Ave., LLC, 4 AD3d 178, 772 N.Y.S.2d 257) and affirmed by the Court of Appeals based, inter alia, on the speculative nature of the opinion of plaintiff’s expert.
[**5] Here, plaintiff’s expert placed substantial reliance on the language of the 2006 American Camp Association Accreditation Process Guide in formulating his opinion. However, although alleged to have been tested “numerous times in litigation”, Mr. Peterson failed to demonstrate, e.g., where or when this guide has [*7] been accepted as an authoritative reference work in any court of law, or its applicability to a camp constructed in the 1940s. Moreover, his opinion that the failure to replace unannealed windows violated certain Pennsylvania codes or statutes is not compelling or binding upon this Court. To the contrary, Peterson’s reliance on 34 Pa. Admin. Code §47.398, to require the use of “safety glass” in bunk windows represents a misreading of the statute, as the provision in question was not adopted until 1972 (some thirty years after the Camp began its operations), and neither it nor any other Pennsylvania building code or regulation has been cited requiring that bunk windows be retrofitted to conform to the 1972 requirements (cf. Buchholz v. Trump 767 Fifth Avenue, 5 NY3d at 9). Moreover, he failed to show that the window in question was actually in a “hazardous” location for purposes of the cited codes, i.e., within 24 inches of the bunkhouse door. In fact, no measurement was provided. “Although noncompliance with…a customary practice or industry standard may be evidence of negligence, the failure to abide by guidelines or recommendations that are not generally-accepted standards in an [*8] industry will not suffice to raise an issue of fact as to a defendant’s negligence” (Diaz v. New York Downtown Hosp., 287 AD2d 357, 358, 731 N.Y.S.2d 694, affd 99 NY2d 542, 784 N.E.2d 68, 754 N.Y.S.2d 195 [citations omitted]; see also Ambrosio v. South Huntington Union Free School Dist., 249 AD2d 346, 671 N.Y.S.2d 110). This, similarly to Buchholz, is just such a case2.
2 Also worthy of note is the Camp’s uncontroverted representation that no similar incidents (other than, e.g., windows broken by vandalism) occurred during its sixty-year history (see February 3, 2010 EBT of Craig Neier, Camp’s Exhibit C).
The City’s cross motion for summary judgment is granted in part, and denied, in part, as hereinafter provided.
[**6] In arguing for dismissal of the negligent supervision claim, the City argues that (1) it provided more than enough chaperones at the training camp, (2) issued oral and written instructions against the type of conduct which caused plaintiff’s injury; (3) the sudden, spontaneous and unforeseeable nature of defendant Cintron’s actions were such that no reasonable amount of supervision could have prevented the injury, and (4) it had no prior notice of the latter’s propensity to engage in the type of conduct that caused plaintiff’s injury. Moreover, [*9] the City maintains that it did not legally own, occupy, or control the Camp; that Cintron’s independent and spontaneous actions breached any chain of causation connected to the condition or maintenance of the camp and/or its cabin windows; and that it possessed no actual or constructive notice of any dangerous condition regarding the composition of the window itself.
In opposition, plaintiffs argue, inter alia, that the lack of supervision which encouraged the horseplay causing the injury is evident by the City’s failure to (1) place an adult in each cabin, as required under plaintiff’s interpretation of the terms of its contract with the Camp (see City’s Exhibit C); (2) adhere to the Regulations of the Chancellor governing adult supervision on school trips (see City’s Exhibit D), and (3) comply with American Camp Association standard HR-10A and 10B regarding the supervision of campers (see June 12, 2013 affidavit of plaintiffs’ expert, Michael J. Peterson, “Opinions 1”).
Here, the duty of supervising the student/athletes was contractually assumed by the City. In determining whether the duty to provide adequate supervision has been breached in the context of injuries caused by the acts [*10] of fellow students, it must be established that school authorities had sufficiently specific knowledge or notice of the dangerous conduct which caused the injury. Put simply, the third-party acts must reasonably have been anticipated (see Brandy B. v. Eden Cent. School Dist., 15 NY3d 297, 302, 934 N.E.2d 304, 907 N.Y.S.2d 735; Mirand v. City of New York, 84 NY2d 44, 49, 637 N.E.2d 263, 614 N.Y.S.2d 372; [**7] Shannea M. v. City of New York, 66 AD3d 667, 886 N.Y.S.2d 483; Doe v. Department of Educ. of City of NY, 54 AD3d 352, 862 N.Y.S.2d 598). In this regard, actual or constructive notice to the school of prior similar conduct is generally required, since school personnel cannot be reasonably expected to guard against all of the sudden and spontaneous acts that take place among students on a daily basis.
Here, the proof of Cintron’s 2006 suspension for fighting at school serves to preclude the City from demonstrating prima facie that his designation as bunk “leader” was reasonable as a matter of law (see Staten v. City of New York and Camp Chen-A-Wanda, Inc., 90 AD3d 893, 935 N.Y.S.2d 80; see also September 16, 2009 EBT of James Munson, pp 16, 33, 39-42; the Camp’s Exhibit E). Neither is Coach Munson’s investigation purportedly uncovering a conflicting version of the events in which the breaking of the glass [*11] is attributed to plaintiff “put[ting] his face” against it (see EBT of James Munson, p 54) sufficient to warrant dismissal of the cause of action pleaded on behalf of the infant plaintiff.
However, it is well settled that a parent cannot recover for the loss of society and companionship of a child who was negligently injured (see White v. City of New York, 37 AD2d 603, 322 N.Y.S.2d 920), while a claim for the loss of a child’s services must be capable of monetarization in order to be compensable (see DeVito v. Opatich, 215 AD2d 714, 627 N.Y.S.2d 441). Here, plaintiff’s mother has offered no proof of the value of any services rendered to her by her son. As a result, so much of the complaint as seeks an award of damages in her individual capacity for the loss of her son’s services must be severed and dismissed.
Accordingly, it is
ORDERED, that the motion for summary judgment of defendant Camp Chen-A-Wanda Inc. is granted, and the complaint and any cross claims as against this defendant are hereby severed and dismissed; and it is further
[**8] ORDERED, that the cross motion for summary judgment of defendants The City of New York and The New York City Department of Education is granted to the extent that the cause(s) of action asserted [*12] by plaintiff Cassandra Dozier in her individual capacity are hereby severed and dismissed, and it is further
ORDERED that the remainder of the cross motion for summary judgment is denied.
ENTER,
/s/
Hon. Thomas P. Aliotta
J.S.C.
Dated: September 18, 2013
Accreditation is marketing. In fact, it may be why you are being sued.
Posted: March 21, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ACA, Accreditation, American Camp Association, Check Lists, education, Marketing, Standards, training 3 CommentsMarketing is not a way to manage risks or stop lawsuits. Marketing Makes Promises that Risk Management Must Pay For.
In an effort to sell services and promote their organization, many trade associations accredit, certify or anoint its members, with various titles, quasi degrees and paper to put on their wall and website. There is always a charge for the program and in many cases; the trade association’s budget is based on selling this program. Many times, these new programs are sold as a cure-all or at least help in risk management or litigation defense.
They are neither. At best, these are training programs; generally, they have little value other than for marketing. Worse, an accreditation can help you lose a lawsuit.
Several trade associations offer this marketing program as a way to show your future clients that you uphold the standards, or whatever of the trade association. (Ignoring the issue that people want to know if you meet their standards, not those of a trade association.) If you pay for the program you will be inspected/reviewed by “trained” members of the association who, then say you have a qualifying program or not. A trade organization will offer the idea that accreditation can provide risk management or better defenses to litigation. Because the program is up to speed on the latest and greatest or at least the tried and true for its industry.
These generally fail for several reasons.
- Because no trade association represents a large segment of the industry and in most cases, they represent less than half of the trade. Granted, the better programs are usually members of the trade association, but that still does give them the clout or numbers needed to dictate how a member should run its business.
- There are dozens of instances where a different way is being used, successfully by other members or non-members of the association. Consequently, the association’s way is proved ineffective or just not the only way.
- State laws and prior litigation have changed the standards, and the trade association has not caught up making their standards look dated.
On top of that, trade associates move by their members. A new idea developed and used by one member needs to float t the surface and be discovered by the group writing the standards. By the time that happens, the standard is written, vetted, reviewed and published several years have passed. You need to react immediately to changes in your industry, not wait for someone to write it down.
Worse no new ideas are created because of fear that the idea will not qualify under the accreditation program creating liability for the member. If you develop a new way to run a program, that is safer but requires less people, you will be liable if you run the program without the required number of people because the association standard requires it. Even if your new idea has that extra person just standing around.
Marketing is not a defense against a lawsuit.
As much as we may wish, showing that an organization may hold itself to a higher standard to prevent litigation or help win a lawsuit, does not work. Standards of care or levels of doing something are not created by trade associations. The issue at trial is whether or not the defendant in litigation is determined by the jury to have met the standard of care proposed by the Expert Witnesses in the trial. Trying does not change that; trying to be good, trying to stay on top of things, trying to be educated does not cause a change.
In reality, it is a minimum two-step process that keeps one from losing in court. The first step is staying current. The second step is staying above the minimum required level of care a jury will accept. However, even these two steps may not be enough with the volume of information that flows today, and the speed which things change. Again the definition of the problem with trade associations and accreditation. The process to create the process is always behind the time curve. As such, the program that received the blessings of the trade association is probably out of date in a courtroom.
Marketing is simply an attempt to influence the decision making of someone. If that person believes that you are a better organization or offer a better program than your competitor, then your marketing was successful. Factors too numerous to discuss and of little relevance to this article go into marketing and how it influences a person’s decision. If you believe the seal on the door or the diploma on the wall going to influence someone to try your program, then take that route, just make sure you understand what you are buying and why.
On a side note, when I had an office, I had art on the walls, Not a single degree or diploma. In twenty years, only one person asked me where my diplomas were. I did not care to look at diplomas; I wanted to look at wildlife and nature scenes. I was spending more time in the office than anyone. Twenty years and only one person cared what diploma I had.
Someone who arrives at your business is going to have higher expectations. The person who sees the promises your marketing makes is going to expect that level or greater service. That expectation will apply, even if the accreditation has nothing to do with the program or the issues of your guests. You are accredited; therefore, I should not have been hurt.
That does not mean you should not tell the world how great you are. It means you must meet the marketing you are promoting.
Marketing also affects and to some extent, shows the world how you think of yourself. A current example is zip lines. For fifty years zip lines were used by the military to train recruits and by movies about the military to thrill viewers. The next twenty years zip lines were used in team building programs as part of a ropes or challenge course. Now zip lines have been used purely as an amusement device. People go out for a day of zip lining like they used to rent go karts or play a round of golf. Your marketing efforts to steer your possible clients back to the idea of team building are going to interfere and have to overcome the general expectations that zip lines are just fun.
Accreditation meets that same issue in the minds of the people coming to your program. Is the certificate on the wall to show me how good you are or on the wall to convince me not to sue? Alternatively, is the certificate proof that you did not take the proper care of me causing my injury. Marketing to cross purposes or marketing to reverse community beliefs is difficult.
Marketing makes Promises that Risk Management has to Pay For.
As stated earlier, the expectations of someone who has researched your diplomas, seals and other marketing accomplishments are going to have a higher expectation that you are not going to injure them. Your commitment to staying current, your efforts to obtain the seal of approval and the paper on the wall are proof, in your guest’s minds, that you are better than your competitors. Better may mean to provide a better program or service. It better definitely means your participants will not be injured.
The American Camp Association (ACA) has an accreditation program that the ACA recognizes for what it is, a marketing program. “ACA Accreditation: Valuable Marketing Tools.” The web page even makes that known. (http://www.acacamps.org/accreditation/marketing). Numerous other instances can be found where accreditation is synonymous with marketing.
- Private Duty Service Expansion through Accreditation and Marketing Excellence
- Importance of Accreditation as a Marketing Strategy
- Use CLE Accreditation as a Marketing Tool
Marketing is not risk management and not good at providing a defense to litigation. The two are opposite in purpose. Marketing is trying to bring people to the program by telling people the program is great and to some extent, safe. If someone is injured, then the program was not safe and the marketing was not true. Having your marketing turn on you while you are a defendant is one of the worst situations to find yourself when involved in litigation. Having your marketing prove that you were a bad operator is the worst.
That does not mean you should not get the best training you can receive in running your business, no matter what the name of the certificate you receive at the end.
Accreditation does have a legal definition and support.
Accreditation from a legal standpoint is defined by Federal Statutes. The Department of Education oversees accreditation of colleges and universities in the United States. A list of accredited college and universities and the agencies that can accredit a college or university can be found at the Department’s website. (There is also a list of those colleges that are no longer recognized.) The department of education also has a statutory scheme for determining how an educational organization will be accredited, which can be found at USC § 1099b. Recognition of accrediting agency or association.
From a legal standpoint, an accredited educational intuition is on that list. It is eligible for federal and state assistance and students of those colleges are eligible for federal financial aid.
Accreditation from any other organization for any other purpose is done to enhance or market the organization seeking the approval and the agency granting the approval. Let’s first look at what this means.
If you are not seeking to offer federal financial aid to your students or receive federal aid, then accreditation can be anything you want. If you want to be accredited, send me $10.00, and I will accredit you. (You have been accredited by James H. Moss) My accreditation has the same legal value and possibly the same marketing value as any other accreditation you can receive. The issues are not. What was done, but what can you hang on your wall and advertise to prospective clients who make you look good? (The $10 will get you a cheap diploma you have to print yourself.)
A good attorney will always look behind the diploma to see what is being covered up. Throw rugs hide spots on carpets, and pictures hide holes on the wall. Attorneys know that paperwork on the wall may be covering up something that the program felt they lacked. In some cases, he or she may only find a hole in the wall. In many cases, he will see that the accreditation is just marketing. Even without an injury that can be associated with a violation of the accreditation requirements, the attorney will use the accreditation against the organization. As the owner proudly runs through his accomplishments on the witness stand, mentioning that his organization is accredited by XYZ trade association the plaintiffs’ attorney will be prepared.
The plaintiff’s attorney will have gone through each of the accreditation requirements that the organization no longer meets or violated and have the owner admit to the problems. If the accreditation is not really based on any real requirements, (like mine), then that will also be pointed out. Either the organization manager or owner will come away looking like they bought the paper to impress guests, or they earned it and then ignored it. A marketing program gone awry.
In many cases, this “accreditation mills” type of accreditation may be probably safer from a legal perspective. There is no list of items or requirements that can be used to show you violated that as an accredited organization, you should not have broken.
You are, in fact, buying marketing when you seek accreditation. This purchase works both ways providing the accrediting agency with value because they can list the organizations that have received accreditation, thus promoting themselves. The organizations that receive accreditation have come to the trade association for its seal of approval boosting the association’s standings the eyes of the industry.
However, accreditation can have a negative side also. Accreditation usually is accompanied by a list of the requirements that must be met. The more the accrediting organization wants to promote itself the longer the list. For an agency that has been accredited, this list then becomes a set of rules which they have agreed to meet. Any failure to meet these rules or regulations cannot be violated. Example:
If the accreditation says you will have one guide per five guests any variation from this at the time of an injury, and the plaintiffs (injured person) attorney has proof that you violated your own rules or standards of operation. In effect, you have provided the plaintiffs with a list of rules which you have agreed not to violate at risk of losing your accreditation.
If accreditation was a true accreditation, it would be removed when an accredited organization fails to continue to meet accreditation. Remember the Department of Education has that list of colleges that no longer are accredited. I’ve never seen a trade association do this (doesn’t mean they don’t).
By providing the plaintiff’s attorney with a list of requirements for accreditation you have also provided the plaintiff’s attorney with the standards that you have breached. The standard is what a reasonable man or organization would do in your situation. Instead of having to dig and hire expects to achieve that information, the plaintiff only has to look up the requirements for accreditation. If the injured guest, the plaintiff’s attorney’s client, was injured when something on that list was not met, then the attorney has proof of a breach of a standard.
It is irritating to see an expert witness report from the plaintiff that goes through each of the points the defendant missed for the diploma hanging on the wall. Most times the plaintiff’s expert witness was trained by the trade association that created the accreditation.
How do you think the Defendant feels watching someone trained by an association he paid money to join and more money to receive their marketing program testify against them?
In the above case, if the accreditation required one guide per five guests and there were twenty guests than the program needs four guides. If one guide stops to look at a flower or slows to tie his shoe, the program now has one guide per 6 or seven guests. If a guest is injured at that moment, the plaintiff’s attorney will argue that the injury could have been prevented with more guides, the standard required a specific number of guides, the defendant organization knew it needed more guides, (it was accredited) and if failed to provide the necessary number of guides.
Accreditation, like any outside review can cost you.
Whenever you have someone come into a program and provide you with a review of your program, that review may come back to haunt you. It is subject to discovery in litigation. Discovery means any document or witness that may have information that may lead to information about the case must be provided to the opposing side. Any document, such as an accreditation review, whether you passed it or not, must be given to the opposing side. Consequently, you want to make sure that any outside review is done in a professional manner and that negative comments and issues are either handled correctly, fixed immediately, or are not part of the written review.
Accreditation has greater value, greater weight for the plaintiff when you have failed to meet the requirements you paid to have reviewed. If the accreditation was so valuable to you, it cost you time and money to receive, how could you, then ignore it without violating the rules?
An example of this that went wrong is the case of Adam Dzialo. (See Marketing is marketing and Risk Management is not marketing, http://rec-law.us/1bPWl1c; Money is important in some lawsuits, but the emotions that start a lawsuit., http://rec-law.us/xbSs4M; Serious Disconnect: Why people sue., http://rec-law.us/wm2cBn, Wow, someone apologized, http://rec-law.us/xEIujw) Adam was enrolled in a summer camp run by Greenfield Community College. The college had just undergone a review to achieve accreditation. The accreditation report stated the number of instructors for the whitewater class was insufficient. Adam suffered a leg entrapment during a whitewater class suffering permanent brain injuries. The number of instructors for the class was below the number required to achieve accreditation, and this became a major issue during the litigation. The review provided in the accreditation process was used by the plaintiff to argue the defendant was negligent.
The defendant was told their program was insufficient, and they ignored that notice. Is the defendant liable?!
Accreditation from the perspective of an advanced degree
If you do not want your program to be marketed as an amusement but something that provides greater benefits, you might align yourself with educational organizations. As such, an “accreditation” may add that aura of validity as an educational organization rather than a summer camp. No matter that most kids would rather go to a fun summer camp than an educational one. (Not that those concepts are totally separate.)
In a courtroom, however, the marketing will be stripped bare and what you are will be laid out in the courtroom. No matter how much money you spend on marketing, if the jury sees you as an amusement park, you are an amusement park, and your marketing program will be exposed as a ruse.
It is easy to strip away an accreditation program. A plaintiff’s lawyer simply goes to the list of developed by the US Department of Education of accreditation agencies and looks for the association that accredited you. As the defendant, you are then in a position of trying to prove the value of your accreditation or diploma on the wall. What did you pay for it and why? What value does it really have? If it is not recognized, isn’t it no more than a marketing program or worse a scam.
The department of education has a statutory scheme for determining how an educational organization will be accredited. USC § 1099b. Recognition of accrediting agency or association. The department of education itself does not accredit educational institutions.
Many times an accrediting association believes that by creating a list of objectives, rules and items to meet the accrediting goals, they have done a good job. In essence, the more rules and paper the better the accreditation. However, as the Department of Education and as most people already know, more does not mean better. The accreditation is based on the “the institution’s mission, goals and objectives, resources and resource allocation, student admission requirements, student support services and the quality of the faculty and educational offerings.” The accreditation is based on the college’s goals as well as the accrediting organizations’ goals.
More may mean very bad.
One of the basic tenets of education is teaching. Helping the student understand, comprehend and be able to use the knowledge gained. One of the tenets of accreditation is the educational organization employs instructors who know the subject matter of what they are teaching but also employs people who have been trained to teach. Very few association accreditation checklists look at whether the instructors have degrees in teaching.
Accreditation at best is just one of many ways an organization can show they strive to be as good as they can and to maintain good practices. It is among a list of things that an organization can do. That other equally important, if not more important items include constant training of employees, maintain professional relationships with trade associations and attending conferences, staying current in the industry. However, the paper on the wall or the seal of approval on the front door, do not prove that this was either effective or provides any protection. The issue is and always has been doing the defendant organization breach a duty of care to the injured plaintiff.
So, what does it mean when you do not meet the standards or accreditation of the trade association when someone was injured?
A legal duty is the duty owed to the plaintiff or what would a reasonable person do in the defendant’s situation. Duty is the first of four steps that the plaintiff must prove to prove negligence. Those steps are:
- Duty
- Breach of a duty
- Injury proximately caused by the breach of duty.
- Damages from the injury
For the plaintiff to win his or her lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove all four elements of negligence. As you can see, nothing in the definition of negligence is based on the diplomas on the wall or the certificates in a file.
The hardest part of any negligence suit to prove for the plaintiff is, was there a duty and a breach of the duty. Duty is defined as the standard of care of a reasonable person or organization in the same position as the defendant. Normally, the plaintiff and his or her attorney would hire expert witnesses to determine if the duty was breached. However, if there is a written document which the defendant has agreed to abide by in running his or her organization, the written document will be substituted by the plaintiff as the standard of care. Those requirements that you met to be accredited are then transposed by the plaintiff as the standards of care that you agreed to meet. Your agreement to meet those requirements is evidence by you proclaiming them to the guests.
By agreeing to them or by calling them standards, it is a foregone conclusion, almost, that, that is the standard of care you breached.
In effect, once accreditation is obtained, it becomes the level of operation that the organization can never fall below. It becomes a list of requirements the organization must always meet every day.
Accreditation or lack thereof, can also come back to haunt you in another way. Like any misrepresentation, if you claim you have a level of training or skill, and you don’t. That is misrepresentation or fraud. Even if the accreditation has no value as a defense and is only a marketing ploy, failure to have what you claim is fraud, and you are liable for any injury your misrepresentation caused.
A good example of that is you are accredited by XYZ Association on January 1, 2012 for a three-year term. Your accreditation says you have your staff trained in current CPR. In January of 2014, the American Red Cross changes how CPR is taught, and none of your staff are current. In fact, 99% of the people trained in CPR are no longer current. If on January 2, 2014, you have someone have a heart attack on your property who dies, are you liable because you stated and held yourself out as being accredited and yet you were not?
Professional relationships, membership in trade associations, employee training and staying current rarely have the possible kick back that the certificate on the wall may have. Those ways of maintaining professionalism do not come with a list of ways that you have failed to be professional.
Another way that any type of training can come back to haunt an industry is in raising the expectation of the guests of the industry above the normal level of care.
Any value of accreditation that once existed has been diluted by its adoption by numerous other industries. Once the sole domain of higher education, as stated earlier anyone and everyone are now offering accreditation for anything and everything. As such, the term has lost any significance in its value to the public. And that value has always been as a marketing tool rather than a legal defense.
Accreditation to be valuable must occur regularly and be current.
Another major issue is once a program receives accreditation. The program ceases to stay current. The program rests on its laurels on in this case the accreditation. The accreditation provides a false sense of accomplishment and finality, when just the opposite is true.
Staying current in an industry is the only way to stay in the winning column in litigation.
Major Organizations do not offer Accreditation.
Very few trade associations offer accreditation. They know that the cost of keeping the accreditation up to the level it should be along with the risk it subjects its membership too, do not justify the time and expense. Some of the organizations that do not offer accreditation in the outdoor recreation industry are the National Ski Area Association, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America and America Outdoors. All of these organizations represent large groups of people. Commercial or business ventures that are serious about their business and represent a large segment of their industry.
Is Accreditation bad?
No accreditation is not a bad thing, unless you are sold on the idea and achieve the accreditation on a mistaken theory that it will assist in either staying out of court or winning in court.
However, like all programs you must know what you are buying. No longer are the days of caveat emptor the rule of the day. That legal pronouncement was created when determining the age of your transportation consisted of looking at the horse’s teeth and walking around the animal. Now days you can look at a car engine for hours and never know if it will run for a day or a lifetime.
The plaintiff is opening your program’s hood and looking forward to seeing if your program runs. You are saying it will because of the paper on the wall or the seal on your website. The trade association went through a checklist of items and issues to hand you a piece of paper. None of those items can guaranty the safety of the guest. All of those items can be used by the guest to prove the program liable and hold you and the trade association accountable.
As it applies to you when you are looking at marketing your program as well as when your clients are looking at your program. If you believe that a marketing program will protect you, you are not studying the program hard enough. Neither will accreditation guaranty the safety of your guests.
- Make sure you know what you are accomplishing before you start.
- Justify why you are going down that route.
- Make sure if your path can be interpreted two ways, that you cover both options to make them good ideas.
- If you find problems fix them immediately.
- You understand the difference between risk management and marketing.
References:
The Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs
What do you think? Leave a comment.
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Copyright 2018 Recreation Law (720) Edit Law
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© 2018 Recreation Law Rec-law@recreation-law.com James H. Moss
When an organization makes rules and regulations that a subsidiary organization is supposed to obey, and then fails to follow, both organizations are liable to any plaintiff injured due to the failure to follow or enforce the organizational rules, policies, regulations or standards.
Posted: July 31, 2017 Filed under: Illinois, Minors, Youth, Children, Youth Camps | Tags: ACA, American Camping Association, Boy Scouts of America, Boys & Girls Clubs, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Child Care, Child Care Facility, cognizable, conscious disregard, exclusive control, factual allegations, farm, GSS, Guide to Safe Scouting, Guidelines, indifference, legal conclusions, Licensed Child Care, Licensed Child Care Facility, medical expenses, National Organization, negligence claims, Negligence per se, Notice, owed, pleaded, Policies, public highway, public road, pulled, pulling, Reckless, Regulations, res ipsa loquitur, right to relief, Rules, seat, speculative, Standards, supervise, Supervision, trailer, Transport, Wanton, wanton misconduct, willful Leave a commentIn this case, the national organization was also sued for failing to instruct and enforce the regional organization in the rules, regulations, standards or policies. If you are going to make rules, and you say the rules must be followed you have to make sure you train in the rules and that everyone follows the rules.
If you make a rule you have to enforce it if you are in charge of making rules.
Otherwise, don’t make rules!
T.K., a minor, v. Boys & Girls Clubs of America, et. al. 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87005
State: Illinois, United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Springfield Division
Plaintiff: T.K., a minor, by and through his natural Father and Next Friend, Timothy Killings, and Timothy Killings, individually
Defendant: Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Boys and Girls Club of Decatur, Inc., and Mary K. Paulin
Plaintiff Claims: negligence and willful and wanton misconduct
Defendant Defenses: Failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted filed in a Motion to dismiss
Holding: for the plaintiff
Year: 2017
This case is a federal diversity case. That means the plaintiff(s) and the defendant(s) were legally residents of different states, and the amount claimed by the plaintiff was greater than $75,000.00. In this case, the plaintiff was from California, and the Defendant was located in Illinois.
The plaintiff was in Illinois and attending the Decatur Boys & Girls Club, which was part of the America Boys & Girls Club. America Boys & Girls Club was based in Georgia.
America Boys & Girls Club provided policies, procedures, rules, guidelines and instructions to the Decatur Boys & Girls Clubs, and all other Boys & Girls Clubs. The Boys & Girls Clubs are required to follow the operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions.
While attending the club, the plaintiff was taken to a local farm. Neither of the defendants had permission to transport the minor plaintiff to the farm. While there the plaintiff was riding on a trailer (probably a hay ride)that did not have guardrails, seats, seatbelts or other equipment designed from keeping people from falling off. (But then very few hay rides do.) The tractor and trailer were pulled onto a public highway with 15-20 children on it. While on the highway the plaintiff either jumped or fell off or might have been pushed
off sustaining injuries.
The farm trailer was not designed or intended to transport people, and the trailer lacked guardrails, seats, seatbelts, and other equipment that might prevent people from falling off it. Defendant Paulin pulled the trailer, with T.K. and 15 to 20 additional children riding on it, onto a public highway with a tractor defendant.
The issue that the trailer was not designed to be on a highway and did not have seats, seatbelts or other equipment to keep people from falling off was repeatedly brought up by the court.
The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, and this opinion is court’s response to that motion.
Analysis: making sense of the law based on these facts.
A motion to dismiss is a preliminary motion filed when the allegations in the complaint do not meet the minimum requirements to make a legally recognizable claim.
“To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Plausibility means alleging factual content that allows a court to reasonably infer that the defendant is liable for the alleged misconduct. A plaintiff’s complaint must suggest a right to relief, “raising that possibility above a speculative level.” “The required level of factual specificity rises with the complexity of the claim.”
When reviewing a motion to dismiss the court must look at the plaintiff’s pleadings as true and any inference that must be drawn from the pleadings is done so in favor of the plaintiff.
To plead negligence under Illinois’s law the plaintiff must prove “…that the defendant owed plaintiff a duty, it breached that duty, and the breach proximately caused plaintiff’s injury.” In Illinois, every person owes all other persons “a duty to exercise ordinary care to guard against injury which naturally flows as a reasonably probable and foreseeable consequence of his act.”
Whether this duty arises in a particular context depends on “the reasonable foreseeability of the injury, the likelihood of the injury, the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the injury, and the consequences of placing the burden on defendants.” Id. A child’s caretaker has a duty to protect the child from harm.
It is a legal question to be decided by the court if a legal duty exists.
…the relationship between him and America Boys & Girls Club and Decatur Boys & Girls Club imposed on the two organizations a duty of care to adequately supervise him and protect him from harm, any unreasonable risk of harm, dangerous instrumentalities, and dangerous conditions.
The plaintiffs argued the duty of care of the two organizations was breached by:
(1) negligently supervising him, (2) allowing and causing him to be placed on a farm trailer that was not designed for transporting children and was therefore dangerous and not reasonably safe for him, (3) failing to warn or failing to adequately warn him of the potential for injury before putting him on the trailer, (4) failing to properly supervise the minors they placed on the trailer, and (5) failing to provide enough staff members to monitor the children they placed on the trailer.
The plaintiff’s also argued there was a greater responsibility and as such duty on the part of the America Boys & Girls Club to train the Decatur club on its rules, regulations and policies and failing to train on them was also negligent.
T.K. further alleges that it failed to properly train Decatur Boys & Girls Club on the operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions of America Boys & Girls Club, and that it failed to supervise Decatur Boys & Girls Club to ensure that the operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions were followed.
In this case, the duty of care was created by the rules, regulations, policies and procedures created by the America Boys & Girls Clubs upon the Decatur Boys & Girls Club.
The plaintiff went on to argue, and since it was quoted by the court, accepted by the court that:
Defendant Paulin put him on the farm trailer even though Defendant Paulin did not have the requisite permission to give him a ride on the trailer. Defendant Paulin towed the trailer, while T.K. and 15 to 20 additional children were on board, with a tractor onto a public highway. According to T.K., Defendant Paulin owed him a duty of care to protect him from any unreasonable risk of harm and breached that duty by (1) allowing and causing him to be placed on a farm trailer that was not designed for transporting children and was therefore dangerous and not reasonably safe for him; (2)
failing to warn him of the potential for injury before putting him on the trailer and pulling the trailer onto a public highway; (3) failing to warn him that the trailer was dangerous and not reasonably safe given that the trailer had no railings, barriers, walls, or seats; and (4) creating a dangerous condition by placing him on the trailer and pulling it onto a public highway.
The court held this was enough to create a duty of care and proved a possible negligence claim.
Furthermore, of note was a statement that a statutory violation of a statute in Illinois does not create a negligence per se claim.
A violation of a statute or ordinance designed to protect human life or property is prima facie evidence of negligence. . . . The violation does not constitute negligence per se, however, and therefore the defendant may prevail by showing that he acted reasonably under the circumstances.”
The court then looked at the minor plaintiff’s father claims to see if those met the requirements to prove negligence in Illinois.
To state a negligence cause of action, Mr. Killings must plead enough facts to make it plausible that he was harmed as a proximate result of Defendants’ breach of a duty they owed to him.
However, the father was not able to prove his claim because it is separate and distinct from the minor’s claim. “The fact that Defendants were responsible for T.K.’s well-being on July 17, 2015, does not mean that Defendants had any duty to Mr. Killings.”
It was T.K., not Mr. Killings, who was placed on an unsafe farm trailer and pulled onto a public road. Defendants, therefore, had a duty to exercise ordinary care to prevent injury to T.K., not Mr. Killings. Further, Mr. Killings does not claim that he was physically injured as a result of Defendants’ negligence; his only claimed injury is the money he has spent and the money he will spend in the future for T.K.’s past and future medical treatment. In short, Mr. Killings has not met the pleading requirements for a negligence claim against any Defendant.
The father also pleaded a claim for loss of aid, comfort, society and companionship of his child. However, Illinois’s law does not allow for recovery of those emotional damages unless the child’s injury is a fatality.
The claim is not one for damages stemming from the child’s physical injury, but one founded on the parents’ liability for the minor’s medical expenses under the Illinois Family Expense Act.
However, the father did have a claim for the medical expenses the father paid on behalf of his minor son for the injuries he incurred.
The plaintiff also pleaded res ipsa loquitur.
Res ipsa loquitur allows “proof of negligence by circumstantial evidence when the direct evidence concerning cause of injury is primarily within the knowledge and control of the defendant.” The doctrine “is meant to bridge an evidentiary gap when an injury could not have happened but for the defendant’s negligence.” Accordingly, res ipsa lo-quitur applies only when the facts “admit of the single inference that the accident would not have happened unless the defendant had been negligent.”
Res ipsa loquitur is a claim that when an incident has occurred, the control of the instrumentality was solely within the control of the defendant.
Under Illinois law, a plaintiff bringing a negligence claim based on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur must plead that he was injured “in an occurrence that ordinarily does not happen in the absence of negligence” and that it was caused “by an agency or instrumentality within the defendant’s exclusive control.
An example of res ipsa loquitur is a passenger in an airplane that crashes. The pilot is the defendant, and the
control of the airplane is solely with the pilot.
Indeed, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur can be appropriate if the instrument that caused the injury was in the defendant’s exclusive control “at a time prior to the injury and there is no change in conditions or intervening act that could reasonably have caused the event resulting in the injury.
However, the allegations of the plaintiff did not meet the requirements of res ipsa loquitur in Illinois.
Plaintiff’s final allegation discussed in the opinion was one for willful and wanton misconduct on the part of the defendants. Under Illinois’s law to establish a claim for willful and wanton conduct, the plaintiff must.
…plead facts establishing the elements of a negligence claim–duty, breach, proximate causation, and harm–and “either a deliberate intention to harm or an utter indifference to or conscious disregard for the welfare of the plaintiff.
Generally, this is the same standard to prove willful and wanton conduct in most states. Once the negligence claim is proved, then the allegations only need to support the additional acts as willful and wanton.
Therefore, to state claims for willful and wanton misconduct against Defendants, T.K. need only additionally allege either intentional or reckless willful and wanton misconduct committed by Defendants.
The court defined willful and wanton conduct.
Reckless willful and wanton misconduct is conduct committed with an utter indifference of or a conscious disregard for the safety of others. To meet this standard, the defendant “must be conscious of his conduct, and, though having no intent to injure, must be conscious, from his knowledge of the surrounding circumstances and existing conditions, that his conduct will naturally and probably result in injury.
With the allegations plead, the court found sufficient information to confirm the plaintiff going forward with willful and wanton claims. Those allegations include:
Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club placed him and 15 to 20 other minors on an unsafe farm trailer with no guardrails, sidewalls, barriers, or seats while providing inadequate supervision. T.K. further alleges that the trailer was not designed to transport people.
Putting kids on a trailer was a major issue for the court. Kids on a highway on a vehicle not created to transport people were enough to create willful and wanton conduct.
The defendant argued that the allegations that created the negligence claim were also allowed to be the same facts. No new allegations needed to be plead to support the claims for willful and wanton conduct.
Under Illinois’s law, “[t]he same acts by a defendant, if sufficiently egregious, can constitute both negligence and willful and wanton conduct.” Therefore, “one can plead the same facts in two counts, one characterizing them as negligence and the other as willful and wanton conduct, if the same facts could support both theories.
The plaintiff had pled enough facts that the court found relevant and substantial to continue with the negligence and willful and wanton claim.
So Now What?
The actual rules, regulations, procedures were not identified by the court in making its decision. However, the continuous restatement of the plaintiff’s allegations in the same order and words. However, the court specifically stated the defendants failed to follow their own rules.
If you have rules, regulations, policies, procedures, or you must abide by such you MUST follow them. There are no loop holes, exceptions or “just this one time” when dealing with rules, policies and procedures that affect safety or affect minors. If you make them, you must follow them.
If you make them, you must make sure everyone is trained on them. One of the big issues the plaintiff pleads and the court accepted was the rules made by the parent organization were not known or followed by the subsidiary organization. The parent organization when making rules is under a requirement to make sure
the rules are understood and followed according to this decision in Tennessee.
The other major issue was transporting the plaintiff away from the location where the parents thought the plaintiff would be without their permission and then transporting the plaintiff on a road without meeting the requirements of state law, seats, seat belts, etc.
When you have minors, especially minors under the age of ten, you are only acting within the realm and space permitted by the parents. The line that makes me cringe every time I hear it on the news is “If I would have known they were going to do ______________, I never would have let me kid go.” Listen and you
will realize you will hear it a lot when a minor is injured.
You need to prepare your program and your parents so that line is never spoken about you.
If you are interested in having me write your release, fill out this Information Form and Contract and send it to me.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
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T.K., a minor, v. Boys & Girls Clubs of America, et. al. 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87005
Posted: July 18, 2017 Filed under: Illinois, Minors, Youth, Children, Youth Camps | Tags: ACA, American Camping Association, Boys & Girls Clubs, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Child Care, Child Care Facility, cognizable, conscious disregard, exclusive control, factual allegations, farm, GSS, Guide to Safe Scouting, Guidelines, Hay Ride, Hayride, indifference, legal conclusions, Licensed Child Care, Licensed Child Care Facility, medical expenses, National Organization, negligence claims, Negligence per se, Notice, owed, pleaded, Policies, public highway, public road, pulled, pulling, Reckless, Regulations, res ipsa loquitur, right to relief, Rules, seat, speculative, Standards, supervise, Supervision, Tractor, trailer, Transport, Wanton, wanton misconduct, willful Leave a commentT.K., a minor, v. Boys & Girls Clubs of America, et. al. 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87005
T.K., a minor, by and through his natural Father and Next Friend, Timothy Killings, and Timothy Killings, individually, Plaintiffs, v. Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Boys and Girls Club of Decatur, Inc., and Mary K. Paulin, Defendants.
Case No. 16-cv-03056
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS, SPRINGFIELD DIVISION
2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87005
June 6, 2017, Decided
June 7, 2017, E-Filed
CORE TERMS: trailer, willful, farm, wanton misconduct, res ipsa loquitur, negligence claims, pleaded, cognizable, exclusive control, wanton, medical expenses, supervision, pulled, negligence per se, public road, legal conclusions, pulling, seat, factual allegations, right to relief, conscious disregard, indifference, speculative, supervise, reckless, notice, owed, public highway, guidelines, transport
COUNSEL: [*1] For T.K., a Minor, By And Through His Natural Father and Next Friend, Timothy Killings, Timothy Killings, Plaintiffs: Christopher Ryan Dixon, THE DIXON INJURY FIRM, St Louis, MO.
For Boys & Girls Club of America, Boys and Girls Club of Decatur, Inc., Defendants: Randall A Mead, LEAD ATTORNEY, DRAKE NARUP & MEAD PC, Springfield, IL.
For Mary K Paulin, Defendant: Daniel R Price, LEAD ATTORNEY, WHAM & WHAM, Centralia, IL.
JUDGES: SUE E. MYERSCOUGH, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
OPINION BY: SUE E. MYERSCOUGH
OPINION
SUE E. MYERSCOUGH, U.S. District Judge:
Before the Court are Defendants Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Boys & Girls Club of Decatur, Inc.’s Combined Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss Complaint and Alternative Rule 12(f) Motion to Strike Portions of Count I of the Second Amended Complaint (d/e 32) and Defendant Mary K. Paulin’s Combined Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss Complaint and Alternative Rule 12(f) Motion to Strike Portions of Count IV of the Second Amended Complaint (d/e 33). The motion filed by Defendants Boys and Girls Club of Decatur, Inc. (Decatur Boys & Girls Club) and Boys & Girls Clubs of America (America Boys & Girls Club) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. Defendant Paulin’s motion is DENIED. In the Second Amended Complaint, T.K., a [*2] minor, through his father, Timothy Killings, sufficiently pleads negligence and willful and wanton misconduct causes of action against all Defendants. In addition, Mr. Killings pleads cognizable claims for T.K.’s past and future medical expenses against all Defendants. However, the allegations of the Second Amended Complaint are not sufficient to render the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applicable against Decatur Boys & Girls Club or America Boys & Girls Club.
I. BACKGROUND
The following facts come from Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint. The Court accepts them as true at the motion to dismiss stage. Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1081 (7th Cir. 2008).
On July 17, 2015, T.K., a then-eight-year-old resident of California, was a member of Decatur Boys & Girls Club, a corporate citizen of Illinois and a licensed child-care facility. On that same date, Decatur Boys & Girls Club was operating a summer camp through its agents and employees, and T.K. was under the paid care and supervision of Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club. America Boys & Girls Club, a corporate citizen of Georgia, provides operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions regarding how Decatur Boys & Girls Club is to operate. Decatur [*3] Boys & Girls Club is required to follow these operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions.
On July 17, 2015, T.K. was taken from the premises of Decatur Boys & Girls Club in Decatur, Illinois, to property in Clinton, Illinois, owned by Defendant Paulin, an Illinois citizen. Neither Decatur Boys & Girls Club nor America Boys & Girls Club had permission to transport T.K. from Decatur to Defendant Paulin’s property in Clinton. Defendants,1 again without permission, put T.K. on a farm trailer owned by Defendant Paulin and located on Defendant Paulin’s property. The farm trailer was not designed or intended to transport people, and the trailer lacked guardrails, seats, seatbelts, and other equipment that might prevent people from falling off it. Defendant Paulin pulled the trailer, with T.K. and 15 to 20 additional children riding on it, onto a public highway with a tractor Defendant Paulin owned. The trailer was not being used in connection with a parade or a farm-related activity.
1 The use of “Defendants” in this Opinion will refer collectively to Decatur Boys & Girls Club, America Boys & Girls Club, and Mary K. Paulin.
While riding on the trailer, T.K. fell or jumped off the trailer or was pushed off. As a result, T.K. sustained injuries to his head, face, eyes, chest, neck, back, arms, lungs, hands, legs, [*4] and feet. T.K. underwent medical treatment for his injuries and will have to undergo additional treatment in the future. T.K’s father, Timothy Killings, a citizen of California, has incurred expenses related to his son’s medical care and will incur additional expenses in the future for his son’s future medical care.
On March 3, 2016, Plaintiffs filed their Complaint (d/e 1) against Defendants. Plaintiffs subsequently filed their First Amended Complaint (d/e 26) on May 23, 2016, and their Second Amended Complaint (d/e 31) on June 17, 2016. The Second Amended Complaint contains five counts. Counts 1 through 3 allege claims against Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club for, respectively, negligence, negligence based on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, and willful and wanton misconduct. Counts 4 and 5 allege negligence and willful and wanton misconduct claims, respectively, against Defendant Paulin.
On June 27, 2016, Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club filed their Combined Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss Complaint and Alternative Rule 12(f) Motion to Strike Portions of Count I of the Second Amended Complaint, asking the Court to dismiss Counts 1 through 3 for failing to [*5] state cognizable claims or, in the alternative, to strike certain paragraphs of the Second Amended Complaint. On June 30, 2017, Defendant Paulin filed her Combined Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss Complaint and Alternative Rule 12(f) Motion to Strike Portions of Count IV of the Second Amended Complaint, asking the Court to dismiss Counts 4 and 5 for failing to state cognizable claims or, in the alternative, to strike certain paragraphs of the Second Amended Complaint.
II. JURISDICTION
This Court has original jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ claims because no Plaintiff is a citizen of the same state as any Defendant and Plaintiffs are seeking damages in excess of $75,000. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1); McMillian v. Sheraton Chi. Hotel & Towers, 567 F.3d 839, 844 (7th Cir. 2009) (“When the jurisdictional threshold is uncontested, we generally will accept the plaintiff’s good faith allegation of the amount in controversy unless it appear[s] to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than the jurisdictional amount.”) (internal quotation marks omitted).
III. LEGAL STANDARD
“To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 173 L. Ed. 2d 868 (2009). Plausibility means alleging factual content that allows a court to reasonably infer [*6] that the defendant is liable for the alleged misconduct. See Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 547, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 167 L. Ed. 2d 929 (2007). A plaintiff’s complaint must suggest a right to relief, “raising that possibility above a speculative level.” Kubiak v. City of Chicago, 810 F.3d 476, 480 (7th Cir. 2016). “The required level of factual specificity rises with the complexity of the claim.” McCauley v. City of Chicago, 671 F.3d 611, 616-17 (7th Cir. 2011).
When faced with a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court “accept[s] as true all of the well-pleaded facts in the complaint and draw[s] all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff.” Roberts v. City of Chicago, 817 F.3d 561, 564 (7th Cir. 2016). “[L]egal conclusions and conclusory allegations merely reciting the elements of the claim are not entitled to this presumption of truth.” McCauley, 671 F.3d at 616. Further, the Court is “not obliged to ignore any facts set forth in the complaint that undermine the plaintiff’s claim.” R.J.R. Servs., Inc. v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 895 F.2d 279, 281 (7th Cir. 1989). The Court may “strike from a pleading . . . any redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter.” Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 12(f).
IV. ANALYSIS
A. Count I and Count IV Sufficiently Plead Negligence and Medical Expense Claims Against All Defendants.
1. T.K. has pleaded cognizable negligence claims against all Defendants.
In a case where federal jurisdiction is based on diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, “[s]tate substantive law applies, but federal procedural rules govern.” Doermer v. Callen, 847 F.3d 522, 529 (7th Cir. 2017). “To state a claim for negligence under Illinois law, a plaintiff must plead [*7] that the defendant owed plaintiff a duty, it breached that duty, and the breach proximately caused plaintiff’s injury.” Allstate Indem. Co. v. ADT LLC, 110 F. Supp. 3d 856, 862-63 (N.D. Ill. 2015) (citing Simpkins v. CSX Transp., Inc., 2012 IL 110662, 965 N.E.2d 1092, 1097, 358 Ill. Dec. 613 (Ill. 2012). In Illinois, “every person owes to all other persons a duty to exercise ordinary care to guard against injury which naturally flows as a reasonably probable and foreseeable consequence of his act.” Jane Doe-3 v. McLean Cnty. Unit Dist. No. 5 Bd. of Dirs., 2012 IL 112479, 973 N.E.2d 880, 890, 362 Ill. Dec. 484 (Ill. 2012). Whether this duty arises in a particular context depends on “the reasonable foreseeability of the injury, the likelihood of the injury, the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the injury, and the consequences of placing the burden on defendants.” Id. A child’s caretaker has a duty to protect the child from harm. Ryan v. Yarbrough, 355 Ill. App. 3d 342, 823 N.E.2d 259, 262, 291 Ill. Dec. 249 (Ill. App. Ct. 2005). Whether a duty exists is a question of law to be decided by the Court. Simpkins, 965 N.E.2d at 1096.
In support of his negligence claims against America Boys & Girls Club and Decatur Boys & Girls Club, T.K.2 alleges that he was a member of Decatur Boys & Girls Club and was entrusted to the care of both organizations on July 17, 2015. Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶¶ 15-16. America Boys & Girls Club and Decatur Boys & Girls Club agreed to accept the “care, custody, and control” of T.K. for the purpose of providing child care. Id. ¶ 16. T.K. also alleges [*8] that on July 17, 2015, the relationship between him and America Boys & Girls Club and Decatur Boys & Girls Club imposed on the two organizations a duty of care to adequately supervise him and protect him from harm, any unreasonable risk of harm, dangerous instrumentalities, and dangerous conditions. Id. ¶¶ 42-43.
2 Plaintiffs do not separate T.K’s claims from Mr. Killings’ claims in the Second Amended Complaint. To avoid confusion, the Court will address the allegations of the Second Amended Complaint as those of T.K. when analyzing T.K’s claims and as those of Mr. Killings when analyzing Mr. Killings’ claims.
Further, according to T.K., America Boys & Girls Club and Decatur Boys & Girls Club breached the duty of care they owed him in several ways, including by (1) negligently supervising him, (2) allowing and causing him to be placed on a farm trailer that was not designed for transporting children and was therefore dangerous and not reasonably safe for him, (3) failing to warn or failing to adequately warn him of the potential for injury before putting him on the trailer, (4) failing to properly supervise the minors they placed on the trailer, and (5) failing to provide enough staff members to monitor the children they placed on the trailer. Id. ¶ 45. With respect to America Boys & Girls Club, T.K. further alleges that it failed to properly train Decatur Boys & Girls Club on the operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions of America Boys & Girls Club and [*9] that it failed to supervise Decatur Boys & Girls Club to ensure that the operating policies, procedures, rules, guidelines, and instructions were followed. Id. ¶¶ 46-47. In addition, T.K. claims that the actions of America Boys & Girls Club and Decatur Boys & Girls Club proximately caused his injuries. Id. ¶¶ 33-39, 49.
In support of his negligence claim against Defendant Paulin, T.K. alleges that on July 17, 2015, Defendant Paulin put him on the farm trailer even though Defendant Paulin did not have the requisite permission to give him a ride on the trailer. Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶¶ 21, 23. Defendant Paulin towed the trailer, while T.K. and 15 to 20 additional children were on board, with a tractor onto a public highway. Id. ¶¶ 28-29. According to T.K., Defendant Paulin owed him a duty of care to protect him from any unreasonable risk of harm and breached that duty by (1) allowing and causing him to be placed on a farm trailer that was not designed for transporting children and was therefore dangerous and not reasonably safe for him; (2) failing to warn him of the potential for injury before putting him on the trailer and pulling the trailer onto a public highway; (3) failing to warn [*10] him that the trailer was dangerous and not reasonably safe given that the trailer had no railings, barriers, walls, or seats; and (4) creating a dangerous condition by placing him on the trailer and pulling it onto a public highway. Id. ¶¶ 72-73. In addition, T.K. alleges that the actions of Defendant Paulin proximately caused his injuries. Id. ¶¶ 33-39, 75.
Based on these allegations, T.K. has sufficiently pleaded negligence claims against Decatur Boys & Girls Club, America Boys & Girls Club, and Defendant Paulin. The allegations in Count I and Count IV of the Second Amended Complaint give Defendants notice of the basis for T.K.’s negligence claims against them and are sufficient to establish that T.K. has a plausible, as opposed to speculative, right to relief against Defendants. This is all that is required of a plaintiff under the federal notice pleading regime. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678; Twombly, 550 U.S. at 547.
Defendants do not seem to dispute such a finding. Indeed, their arguments for the dismissal of Count I and Count IV focus on the allegations in the Second Amended Complaint relating to an alleged violation of 625 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/11-1408, a provision of the Illinois Vehicle Code, and claims that their alleged statutory violations constitute [*11] negligence per se. See Mot. to Dismiss (d/e 32), at 1-2; Memorandum of Law (d/e 21), at 4-6; Mot. to Dismiss (d/e 33), at 1-2; Memorandum of Law (d/e 34), at 1-2. Defendants are correct that Illinois does not recognize statutory violations as negligence per se. See Kalata v. Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc., 144 Ill. 2d 425, 581 N.E.2d 656, 661, 163 Ill. Dec. 502 (Ill. 1991) (“A violation of a statute or ordinance designed to protect human life or property is prima facie evidence of negligence. . . . The violation does not constitute negligence per se, however, and therefore the defendant may prevail by showing that he acted reasonably under the circumstances.”). But the inclusion of allegations regarding violations of 625 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/11-1408 and negligence per se do not require the dismissal of Count I or Count IV. As the Court has explained above, T.K. has sufficiently pleaded negligence claims against Defendants without the allegations relating to statutory violations. Cf. Bartholet v. Reishauer A.G. (Zurich), 953 F.2d 1073, 1078 (7th Cir. 1992) (“[T]he complaint need not identify a legal theory, and specifying an incorrect theory is not fatal.”).
2. Timothy Killings has pleaded cognizable medical expense claims against all Defendants.
Just because T.K. has cognizable negligence claims against Defendants does not mean that Timothy Killings, T.K.’s father, also has such claims. To state a [*12] negligence cause of action, Mr. Killings must plead enough facts to make it plausible that he was harmed as a proximate result of Defendants’ breach of a duty they owed to him. Allstate, 110 F. Supp. 3d at 862-63. Mr. Killings has failed to meet his burden. The fact that Defendants were responsible for T.K.’s well-being on July 17, 2015, does not mean that Defendants had any duty to Mr. Killings. See Bruntjen v. Bethalto Pizza, LLC, 2014 IL App (5th) 120245, 385 Ill. Dec. 215, 18 N.E.3d 215, 231 (Ill. App. Ct. 2014) (“The criterion in a duty analysis is whether a plaintiff and a defendant stood in such a relationship to each other that the law imposed an obligation upon the defendant to act for the protection of the plaintiff.”). It was T.K., not Mr. Killings, who was placed on an unsafe farm trailer and pulled onto a public road. Defendants therefore had a duty to exercise ordinary care to prevent injury to T.K., not Mr. Killings. Further, Mr. Killings does not claim that he was physically injured as a result of Defendants’ negligence; his only claimed injury is the money he has spent and the money he will spend in the future for T.K.’s past and future medical treatment. See Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶¶ 38-39. In short, Mr. Killings has not met the pleading requirements for a negligence claim against any Defendant.
But just because Mr. [*13] Killings has not pleaded cognizable negligence claims against Defendants does not mean that he has pleaded no cognizable claims against them. In Illinois, parents have a cause of action against a tortfeasor who injures their child and causes them to incur medical expenses. Pirrello v. Maryville Acad., Inc., 2014 IL App (1st) 133964, 386 Ill. Dec. 108, 19 N.E.3d 1261, 1264 (Ill. App. Ct. 2014). The claim is not one for damages stemming from the child’s physical injury, but one founded on the parents’ liability for the minor’s medical expenses under the Illinois Family Expense Act. Id.; see also 750 Ill. Comp. Stat. 65/15(a)(1) (obligating parents to pay for the “expenses of the family”). T.K. has pleaded cognizable negligence claims against Defendants. Mr. Killings alleges that he has been saddled with bills stemming from T.K.’s medical care, some of which he has paid, and that he will incur additional medical bills in the future as a result of the injuries T.K. suffered on account of Defendants’ negligence. Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶¶ 38-39. Mr. Killings is the father of T.K., a minor, and is required by law to pay for T.K.’s medical expenses, Mr. Killings has adequately pleaded claims against Defendants for the recovery of the amounts paid or to be paid for T.K.’s past and future medical expenses stemming from Defendants’ negligence.
One [*14] final point merits a brief discussion. In the Second Amended Complaint, Mr. Killings alleges that he has suffered, as a result of T.K.’s injuries, “loss of aid, comfort, society, companionship, pleasure, and the family relationship.” Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶ 40. However, in Illinois, a parent may not “recover for loss of the society and companionship of a child who is nonfatally injured.” Vitro v. Mihelcic, 209 Ill. 2d 76, 806 N.E.2d 632, 633, 282 Ill. Dec. 335 (Ill. 2004). Therefore, Mr. Killings has no valid claim for loss of society and companionship in this case.
3. The Court strikes paragraph 27 from Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint.
As an alternative to the dismissal of Count I of the Second Amended Complaint, Defendants Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club ask the Court to strike paragraphs 50 through 55 of the Complaint. Mot. to Dismiss (d/e 32), at 2. Similarly, Defendant Paulin asks the Court, as an alternative to the dismissal of Count IV, to strike paragraphs 76 through 81 of the Second Amended Complaint. Mot. to Dismiss (d/e 33), at 1-2. According to Defendants, the Court should strike these paragraphs because they are ultimately used to claim that Defendants’ alleged statutory violations constitute negligence per se.
Additionally, Defendants [*15] Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club request that the Court strike paragraph 27 from the Second Amended Complaint for being duplicative of paragraph 25 and strike paragraphs 42, 43, 44, 48, 68, 69, and 70 because those paragraphs are legal conclusions. Mot. to Dismiss (d/e 32), at 4. But even assuming that the aforementioned paragraphs are legal conclusions, as opposed to factual allegations, that is no reason to strike them from the Second Amended Complaint. Although Plaintiffs are required to plead facts that indicate they have a plausible, as opposed to a speculative, right to relief, see Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, they are not prohibited from also pleading legal conclusions that might help to provide Defendants with notice of the claims brought against them or provide context for the factual allegations. See State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Riley, 199 F.R.D. 276, 278 (N.D. Ill. 2001) (citing Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325, 109 S. Ct. 1827, 104 L. Ed. 2d 338 (1989)) (noting that “legal conclusions are an integral part of the federal notice pleading regime” and that Rule 8(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires parties to respond to all allegations contained within a pleading, including legal conclusions). Therefore, the Court strikes only paragraph 27 of the Second Amended Complaint, as it is duplicative of paragraph 25.
B. The Allegations of Plaintiffs’ Second Amended [*16] Complaint Are Insufficient to Render the Doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur Applicable Against Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club.
Res ipsa loquitur is a rule of evidence applicable to a negligence claim, not a distinct theory of recovery. Rice v. Burnley, 230 Ill. App. 3d 987, 596 N.E.2d 105, 108, 172 Ill. Dec. 826 (Ill. App. Ct. 1992). Res ipsa loquitur allows “proof of negligence by circumstantial evidence when the direct evidence concerning cause of injury is primarily within the knowledge and control of the defendant.” Metz v. Cent. Ill. Elec. & Gas Co., 32 Ill. 2d 446, 207 N.E.2d 305, 307 (Ill. 1965). The doctrine “is meant to bridge an evidentiary gap when an injury could not have happened but for the defendant’s negligence.” Buechel v. United States, 746 F.3d 753, 765 (7th Cir. 2014). Accordingly, res ipsa loquitur applies only when the facts “admit of the single inference that the accident would not have happened unless the defendant had been negligent.” Britton v. Univ. of Chi. Hosps., 382 Ill. App. 3d 1009, 889 N.E.2d 706, 709, 321 Ill. Dec. 441 (Ill. App. Ct. 2008). Whether the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applies is a question of law to be determined by the Court. Imig v. Beck, 115 Ill. 2d 18, 503 N.E.2d 324, 329, 104 Ill. Dec. 767 (Ill. 1986).
Under Illinois law, a plaintiff bringing a negligence claim based on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur must plead that he was injured “in an occurrence that ordinarily does not happen in the absence of negligence” and that it was caused “by an agency or instrumentality within the defendant’s exclusive control.” Avalos-Landeros v. United States, 50 F. Supp. 3d 921, 927 (N.D. Ill. 2014) (citing Heastie v. Roberts, 226 Ill. 2d 515, 877 N.E.2d 1064, 1076, 315 Ill. Dec. 735 (Ill. 2007)). Although, in the past, [*17] a plaintiff had to allege that the “the injury occurred under circumstances indicating that it was not due to any voluntary act or neglect on the part of the plaintiff,” this requirement was removed due to the adoption of comparative fault principles in Illinois. Heastie, 877 N.E.2d at 1076. With respect to the requirement of “exclusive control,” a defendant’s control over the instrumentality “at the time of the alleged negligence is not defeated by lack of control at the time of the injury.” Darrough v. Glendale Heights Cmty. Hosp., 234 Ill. App. 3d 1055, 600 N.E.2d 1248, 1252-53, 175 Ill. Dec. 790 (Ill. App. Ct. 1992). Indeed, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur can be appropriate if the instrument that caused the injury was in the defendant’s exclusive control “at a time prior to the injury and there is no change in conditions or intervening act that could reasonably have caused the event resulting in the injury.” Id. at 1253.
T.K. alleges that “a minor child under the care and supervision of a registered, licensed professional child care facility does not ordinarily sustain serious injuries when properly supervised in the absence of negligence.” Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶ 60. Further, T.K. claims that at the time he sustained his injuries, the farm trailer that injured him was under the exclusive control of Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys [*18] & Girls Club. Id. ¶ 61. These allegations are not sufficient to render the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applicable here. See Twombly, 550 U.S. at 545 (noting that “a formulaic recitation of a cause of action’s elements” will not withstand a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss). And although the Second Amended Complaint contains numerous factual allegations regarding the incident in which T.K. was injured, those allegations do not indicate a plausible right to relief for T.K. under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.
Because the facts pleaded in Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint provide no support for the second prong in the res ipsa loquitur analysis–whether an injury was caused by an object within the defendant’s exclusive control–the Court’s res ipsa loquitur analysis will begin and end with that prong. Even assuming that the incident in which T.K. was injured was one that does not ordinarily occur in the absence of negligence, T.K.’s account of the circumstances surrounding the accident indicate that it was Defendant Paulin, not Decatur Boys & Girls Club or America Boys & Girls Club, who had exclusive control of the farm trailer. According to the Second Amended Complaint, the farm trailer that injured T.K. was owned [*19] by Defendant Paulin and located on Defendant Paulin’s property. Defendant Paulin was the one who pulled the trailer onto a public road with T.K. and several other minor children on board. Defendant Paulin owned the tractor with which the trailer was pulled. Although T.K. claims that Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club were responsible for placing him on the farm trailer, he makes the same allegation with respect to Defendant Paulin. See Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶¶ 22-23. In short, there is nothing in the Second Amended Complaint to support T.K.’s allegation that Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club were in exclusive control of the farm trailer at any time.
Based on this analysis, the Court has determined that the factual allegations of the Second Amended Complaint are not sufficient to render the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applicable. In doing so, the Court again notes that res ipsa loquitur is an evidentiary rule, not a distinct theory of recovery. If facts uncovered through the discovery process sufficiently support the application of res ipsa loquitur against any Defendant, the Court will allow T.K. to rely on the doctrine at the summary judgment [*20] stage and will allow the trier of fact to consider and apply the doctrine as to that Defendant.
C. Count III and Count V Sufficiently Plead Willful and Wanton Misconduct Claims Against the Defendants.
To state a claim under Illinois law for willful and wanton misconduct, a plaintiff must plead facts establishing the elements of a negligence claim–duty, breach, proximate causation, and harm–and “either a deliberate intention to harm or an utter indifference to or conscious disregard for the welfare of the plaintiff.” Kirwan v. Lincolnshire-Riverwoods Fire Protections Dist., 349 Ill. App. 3d 150, 811 N.E.2d 1259, 1263, 285 Ill. Dec. 380 (Ill. App. Ct. 2004) (quoting Adkins v. Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Ctr., 129 Ill. 2d 497, 544 N.E.2d 733, 743, 136 Ill. Dec. 47 (Ill. 1989)). As noted above, T.K. has sufficiently pleaded negligence causes of action against all Defendants. T.K. has incorporated the allegations comprising his negligence claims into his willful and wanton misconduct claims against Defendants. Therefore, to state claims for willful and wanton misconduct against Defendants, T.K. need only additionally allege either intentional or reckless willful and wanton misconduct committed by Defendants. Reckless willful and wanton misconduct is conduct committed with an utter indifference of or a conscious disregard for the safety of others. Kirwan, 811 N.E.2d at 1263. To meet this standard, the defendant “must be conscious of his conduct, [*21] and, though having no intent to injure, must be conscious, from his knowledge of the surrounding circumstances and existing conditions, that his conduct will naturally and probably result in injury.” Id.
In the Second Amended Complaint, T.K. alleges that on July 17, 2015, Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club placed him and 15 to 20 other minors on an unsafe farm trailer with no guardrails, sidewalls, barriers, or seats while providing inadequate supervision. Sec. Am. Complaint, ¶¶ 22, 65. T.K. further alleges that the trailer was not designed to transport people. Id. ¶ 24. T.K claims that Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club failed to take necessary safety precautions and operated their summer camp recklessly or with gross negligence. Id. ¶¶ 64, 68. According to T.K., the actions and inaction of Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club were “willful, wanton, grossly negligent, careless, [and] reckless” and “showed an utter indifference to or conscious disregard for the safety of [T.K.].” Id. ¶ 70.
T.K. also includes several allegations in Count III about what Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club “knew or should have [*22] known.” Specifically, according to T.K., Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club knew or should have known that the farm trailer was unreasonably dangerous, that additional supervision was required for the 15 to 20 children riding on the farm trailer, and that there was no way for the children to be properly seated on the farm trailer. Id. ¶¶ 66-68. Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club also knew or should have known that placing children on the farm trailer and pulling it with a tractor without proper supervision posed a high probability of serious physical harm to T.K. Id. ¶ 69.
With respect to Defendant Paulin, T.K. alleges that Defendant Paulin placed T.K. on a farm trailer that was not designed or intended to transport people and had no guardrails, seats, or seat belts to prevent people from falling off it. Id. ¶¶ 23, 25-26. Further, T.K. claims that Defendant Paulin had no intention of making sure that T.K. was safe when she placed him on the farm trailer and pulled it onto a public road. Id. ¶ 83. T.K. also claims that Defendant Paulin failed to take necessary safety precautions. Id. ¶ 85. Defendant Paulin’s conduct, according to T.K., was “willful, [*23] wanton, grossly negligent, careless, [and] reckless” and showed a “conscious disregard for the safety of [T.K.].” Id. ¶ 87.
As with Decatur Boys & Girls Club and America Boys & Girls Club, T.K. includes allegations in the Second Amended Complaint regarding what Defendant Paulin “knew or should have known.” Specifically, T.K. alleges that Defendant Paulin knew or should have known that the farm trailer was unreasonably dangerous, that pulling children onto a public road while on the trailer was unreasonably dangerous, and that placing children on the farm trailer and pulling the trailer onto a public roadway without proper supervision posed a high probability of serious physical harm or death. Id. ¶¶ 83-84, 86.
T.K.’s allegations are sufficient to plead willful and wanton misconduct claims against Defendants. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require that a pleading include “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 8(a)(2). A plaintiff need not plead enough facts to show that he is likely to prevail on his claim; rather, he is required only to include enough facts to raise his claim from speculative to plausible. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. The allegations set forth [*24] above are sufficient to make it plausible that Defendants committed willful and wanton misconduct when they put T.K. on an unsafe farm trailer not designed for transporting people, failed to take necessary safety precautions, and either failed to properly supervise T.K. or pulled the trailer, with T.K. on it, onto a public road. See Worthem v. Gillette Co., 774 F. Supp. 514, 517 (N.D. Ill. 1991) (holding that the plaintiff had sufficiently pleaded willful and wanton misconduct claims where she alleged that “willful and wanton acts or omissions [were] committed or omitted with conscious indifference to existing circumstances and conditions” and went on to “enumerate specific instances of willful and wanton conduct”).
Although T.K.’s “knew or should have known” allegations against Defendants may have been insufficient to meet his pleading burden with respect to willful and wanton misconduct claims, see id. (admitting that the court “might agree” with the defendant’s arguments that “knew or should have known” allegations are mere negligence allegations insufficient to merit punitive damages), T.K. does not rely solely on these allegations in his willful and wanton misconduct claims against Defendants. Indeed, as the Court has noted above, Count III [*25] and Count V of the Second Amended Complaint, which incorporate the allegations from the counts preceding them, contain specific factual allegations regarding the actions Defendants took. Further, the Court does not view T.K.’s “knew or should have known” allegations as completely irrelevant to a willful and wanton misconduct claim under Illinois law, which holds that willful and wanton misconduct can be found where there is a failure to discover a danger through carelessness when it could have been discovered through the exercise of ordinary care. Ziarko v. Soo Line R.R. Co., 161 Ill. 2d 267, 641 N.E.2d 402, 406, 204 Ill. Dec. 178 (Ill. 1994).
The fact that T.K. bases his willful and wanton claims on the same facts as his negligence claims is of no concern. Under Illinois law, “[t]he same acts by a defendant, if sufficiently egregious, can constitute both negligence and willful and wanton conduct.” Bastian v. TPI Corp., 663 F. Supp. 474, 476 (N.D. Ill. 1987) (citing Smith v. Seiber, 127 Ill. App. 3d 950, 469 N.E.2d 231, 235, 82 Ill. Dec. 697 (Ill. App. Ct. 1984). Therefore, “one can plead the same facts in two counts, one characterizing them as negligence and the other as willful and wanton conduct, if the same facts could support both theories.” Bastian, 663 F. Supp. at 476 (citing O’Brien v. Twp. High Sch. Dist. 214, 83 Ill. 2d 462, 415 N.E.2d 1015, 1018, 47 Ill. Dec. 702 (Ill. 1980).
V. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Defendants Boys & Girls Club of America and Boys & Girls Club of Decatur, Inc.’s Combined Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss Complaint and Alternative Rule 12(f) Motion [*26] to Strike Portions of Count I of the Second Amended Complaint (d/e 32) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. Count II of Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint is DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. Further, the Court STRIKES paragraph 27 of Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint as duplicative. Defendant Mary K. Paulin’s Combined Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss Complaint and Alternative Rule 12(f) Motion to Strike Portions of Count IV of the Second Amended Complaint (d/e 33) is DENIED. Pursuant to Rule 12(a)(4)(A) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Defendants have 14 days from the date they receive a copy of this Order to file an answer to Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint.
ENTER: June 6, 2017.
/s/ Sue E. Myerscough
SUE E. MYERSCOUGH
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
If you mix up your language, you will be held to the wrong standard in court
Posted: October 30, 2013 Filed under: Minors, Youth, Children, Summer Camp, Youth Camps | Tags: ACA, American Camp Association, Best Practices, Standard of Care, Standards, Summer Camp Leave a commentBest practices are not standards
A little piece popped up on an association website to try to convince people to buy into the association standards. Two of the statements, instead of solving problems as the piece was trying to do, will guaranty that members lose lawsuits. The statements that were posted were:
The media calls and asks what set of best practices/standards my camp follows.
I realize it is the professional standard of my profession.
Standards in court are the lowest acceptable level of doing (or not doing something). If you fall below the standard, then you have breached the duty of care that you owe to your guest. Duty is the first of four steps needed to prove you were negligent.
Best Practices are a good way of doing something, maybe not the absolute, but a very good way. Best practices are what you strive to achieve.
Best Practices and Standards are different. Different to the point that one is aimed at achieving the best you can and the other is the minimum that must be achieved.
Best Practices imply that there is more than one way to do something. Standards mean it is the way, usually the only way to do something.
That is how this confusion is going to affect a program that mixes these up and ends up in court. There are two possible outcomes from this mix. You write your standards and label them best practices, or you write best practices and label them as standards.
Problem 1: You write you standards and label them best practices
Someone is injured. This is an odd situation where you probably have not acted at the level you say you would. As an example, your best practices say that you want an average of three adults with every group of eight ten-year olds. You normally have two adults with a group like that, and the industry standard is one adult with a group of eight ten-year olds.
If a ten-year-old is injured you will have to show that you did not meet your best practices, but you probably did not fall below the standard.
Problem 2: You write best practices and label them as standards.
This is simple, no matter what you do, you will not be meeting the minimum acceptable level of doing (or not doing) something. Your standards will always be too high, and any injury will be proof that you have violated your own standards.
You must understand the difference between everything and standards from a legal point of view.
New Jersey Model Jury Instructions state:
5.10A NEGLIGENCE AND ORDINARY CARE – GENERAL
To summarize, every person is required to exercise the foresight, prudence and caution which a reasonably prudent person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances. Negligence then is a departure from that standard of care.
Restatement Second of Torts, section 282, defines negligence as “conduct which falls below the standard established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm.”
These are just examples and when looking at the specific issues and instructions to be given, the law has much more depth. However, your own words will be used against you in the worst way by the opposing side if you are ever sued.
See ACA Standards Aren’t Important . . .
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Marketing is marketing and Risk Management is not marketing
Posted: September 18, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ACA, Accreditation, AEE, Standard of Care, Standards Leave a commentEvery business wants to increase its presence in the community and its business. One way members of the outdoor recreation industry do this is through marketing programs called accreditation.
Accreditation is a process where your business or program has met the necessary requirements that the trade association has created. The accreditation process usually incorporates meeting requirements or in many cases, standards created by the association to gauge whether the business or program should be accredited. If the business or program meets accreditation, then they can advertise that fact to the general public.
Accreditation also has come to mean that once you have achieved a level or completed the requirements and advertised that fact to the general public, the public has the right to expect that level of accomplishment from at all times. That is where accreditation can be as dangerous as it may be beneficial.
In Lesser v. Camp Wildwood, 282 F. Supp. 2d 139; 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16170, a camper was injured when the wind blew a branch out of a tree injuring him. The decision is on a motion in liminae. A motion in liminae is a motion where the judge decides what evidence or witnesses will be allowed to testify or in the trial. The plaintiff argues in the motion that the plaintiff will prove the defendant failed to meet the standards of the American Camping Association (ACA). The defendant camp was an accredited member of the ACA.
The accreditation process required the defendant camp to have an emergency plan for severe storms. The plan called for the campers to move as a group to the dining hall. In this case, a storm came up during a firework works display while the campers were at the waterfront. When the campers were told to leave the area and go to their cabins the plaintiff went a different way placing him in a position to be struck by the branch causing his injuries.
The court in the published decision stated that because the defendant camp “repeatedly claimed that they have complied with ACA standards, and that ACA camps are safer, then” other non-ACA camps. It was important for the plaintiff’s expert to prove that the camp had not followed the ACA standards.
The reason why this case is disturbing is because it set a level of care that was much higher than required under New York law. The defendant camp was located in New York, which is also where the suit was filed. Under New York law, the standard of care for camps was:
“schools, camps or similar institutions have a duty to exercise the same degree of care as would a reasonably prudent parent under similar circumstances.”
“…camps, like schools, “are not insurers of safety . . . for they cannot reasonably be expected to continuously supervise and control all movements and activities of students.”
“Organizers of recreational events “owe a duty to exercise only reasonable care to protect participants ‘from injuries arising out of unassumed, concealed or unreasonably increased risks”
“…constant supervision is neither feasible nor desirable because one of the benefits of such an institution is to inculcate self-reliance in the campers which an overly protective supervision would destroy”).”
Because the camp was accredited and held itself out to a higher standard, the court was going to allow testimony that the camp had failed to meet that standard of care that it advertised it met. The camp through its marketing program raised the standard it must meet in court from reasonable supervision and control to constant supervision and control. But for accreditation, the camp would not have been in the position in the lawsuit it found itself.
The definition of accreditation by the Council on Accreditation (COA) is a formal evaluation of an organization against accepted criteria or standards. (http://www.coastandards.org/glossary.php) The COA does not define “standard.” Even if the COA did define standard or if the standards written by the trade association defined the term “standard,” the definition will probably not matter in a court.
The standard of care is the level of acting or not acting that determines if a duty was breached to an injured person. If the duty existed, if the duty was then breached, if there were an injury and damages, a direct result of the breach of duty, then negligence has been proven. Violating a standard of care is then the first step the plaintiff must prove to recover damages from the defendant.
The vast majorities of the lawsuits for injuries are torts, which require the proof of negligence. If the defendants through their marketing program help the plaintiffs prove their cases in lawsuits against them is the marketing program of real value in the long run.
Jury instructions define “standard of care” as “a duty to use that degree of care which a person of similar age, experience and intelligence would ordinarily use under the same or similar circumstances.”[1] A reasonable person is not an expert or a committee. It is one person in that situation at that time. That allows the defendant to argue and the jury to understand that no one is perfect and that what may be required in that situation is not the same as you would expect if the world was perfect.
Standards that lead to accreditation create unreasonable expectations that cannot be met or exceed what is legally required on the part of defendants. Lesser is a perfect example of that issue.
How does the jury determine the industry standard? It is presented to the jury by both sides of the litigation. Both the plaintiff and the defendant have the opportunity to argue the appropriate level of care or standard for the situation. This is normally accomplished through expert witnesses. Expert witnesses are people who study or work in the industry that can testify to the standard of care. Although this may seem archaic or costly, it gives the defendant a fighting chance. There is the opportunity to prove that the defendant did not act below the standard of care. It is then up to the jury to apply the facts, decide on the standard and determine if the defendant injured the plaintiff.
In Kearns v. Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, CV OC 0500538 4th District, Idaho, the plaintiff hired an expert witness who was an ACA Accreditation Visitor. An ACA Accreditation Visitor is hired by the camp to come to the camp and review the camp to see if the camp qualifies for accreditation. The visitor’s expert witness report listed numerous standards created by the ACA that the defendant camp had violated. The standards the defendant camp allegedly violated in several cases had nothing to do with the claims of the plaintiff. Yet the ACA standards were used to prove the defendant camp had acted in a way that was below the standard of care for a camp.[2]
In Kearns, a person trained by the trade association in its standards, and accreditation process was hired to help defeat a member of the trade association. That was done using the standards created by the association to show the defendant camp was negligent.
Accreditation is not bad if it is understood and used the way it was envisioned: to show that educational institutions have met the minimum requirements to be a good college or university. Accreditation for colleges and universities looks at the facilities, the professors and their degrees and the ratio of professors to students. It evaluates whether or not the college will do a good job of educating students. The accreditation process is not created in a way that a college or university can be held liable to a student if the student is injured on camps. Accreditation done properly does not create a standard of care that a person will be held to in a lawsuit.
In July 1998, Adam Dzialo was permanently injured when he suffered a near drowning in the Deerfield River. He was part of a program fun by the Greenfield Community College. The college had recently undergone an accreditation review by the Association of Environmental Education (AEE). One of the issues the review highlighted was the college did not employ enough instructors in its paddlesports programs. This lack of instructors was a major issue in the lawsuit by the plaintiff to argue the college had not met the standard of care to the plaintiff. The suit settled eventually, but not before litigation was dismissed in state court and filed in federal court and the resulting several years of fees, costs and emotion.
To achieve accreditation, the trade associations have written standards that must be met by the program or business. Standards are the lowest allowable level of acting or not acting that a jury will allow a defendant to do or not do. That means if you act below the standard you have breached a duty of care, if you act above a standard, you have not breached a duty of care. Standards are difficult to write because that level of care changes over time, by location, and by the plaintiff. Standards then are written broadly but interpreted narrowly by the courts.
Standards are also written for all circumstances. Nothing is ever the same, even on paper. The standard of care owed by a program to a five-year-old is different from the standard of care owed to a sixteen-year-old. The standard of care owed when taking someone down a class, I river is different than the standard of care of taking someone down a Class IV river. However, we all know that river ratings are very subjective.
Think about any outdoor recreation trip or program you have participated in. Has it ever gone exactly as planned? Has everyone shown up exactly on time, arrived at the start when planned and carried all the right gear, and not too much gear? Has the weather always been what was forecasted and never been a problem Have all the participants had a great time, no bad days and no injuries. When you can consistently run your trips exactly as planned then you can apply standards to your trips because you know exactly how things are going to work. Nothing will go wrong that may lower the way the trip is run below the standard of care.
Additionally, the standards created by associations for its members tend to be goals rather than the minimum acceptable level of care. Consider the issues when a defendant is held to a goal as the minimal acceptable level of care in a court. There is no way that any defendant can meet a goal, when sometimes they cannot meet the minimal level of care.
Standards also change. Look at the progression of alpine skis over the past ten years. At one time, a ski 215 centimeters long and slightly wider than your foot was the standard found in most ski shops. Today the longest ski that can be found is 196 centimeters, and some look like water skis rather than skis to be used on snow. Skis used to arc with only the tips and tails touching when the basis of the skis are put together. Now the only part so the skis that touch is the area under the binding and the tips separate by inches. If the ski industry wrote standards for how ski areas are to operate, how fast could they react and update standards for skis that change yearly.
And what if the standard is wrong? Will the trade association show up in court and say they made a mistake the standard is incorrect. A standard that is wrong is still a standard. The plaintiff will argue it is correct, and the defendant will be forced to defend against a standard that they could not meet and is incorrect to begin with.
Research on standards means nothing in court. It does not matter if the standards are written with the best intention, and they are or with the best goals for the members of the association. Courtrooms are not places to test ideas or raise expectations of potential guests. Courtrooms are where decisions about the future of your business or program are made. You do not want some third party group of people, five years in the past, making that decision for you.
Standards don’t allow for experimentation or growth. If the standard does not allow you to try something new or exceeds the standard you are stuck in the past. Many standards soon become the Twilight Zone of an industry because they lag behind the new and better.
Why is accreditation being promoted in an industry? Money. Trade associations are paid a substantial amount of money so that their membership can post their seal of approval in their marketing. This income is a substantial part of the budget, and they will be hard-pressed to replace it. A trade association, that has created standards, is than caught in a financial bind. They must support their standards to maintain their current financial situation.
Litigation is emotional draining, very costly and takes years; and that is if you win. Society seems to be heading towards a situation where any injury should be the responsibility of someone else. If you make that easy for someone to sue you or to win the lawsuit, you have lost the battle before you have opened your doors for business.
Standards are written with no intention of being found in courts of law. However, this brief article points to three cases where the standards created by a trade association are used in court against the people the standards were created to help. It does not matter how much research can be found to support the creation of standards when they become the noose around a trade association member’s neck.
If the defendant is faced with a written standard, the plaintiff says they are violating, the expert witness of the defendant has two issues to prove or maybe the defendant must hire more experts. The first is the standards written by the association are not the standard in the industry. The second then is the standard is different.
Proving the trade association did not write standards is difficult. In most cases, it simply becomes an attack on the association showing it is not everything the association says it is. That the association does not represent the majority of people or business in its industry or that the majority of the membership is not accredited. This is an ugly fight.
Marketing is needed by everyone. On top of that we want our business or program to show we are more than good, that we are the best.
It does not matter how great the benefits of accreditation are, if the program is used to prove you negligent in a court of law. Accreditation may bring you more business; however, the cost of that additional business may not be enough to cover the lost time involved in litigation and increased cost of your insurance. Let alone the time and expense you put into meeting the accreditation.
Marketing makes Promises that Risk Management must pay for.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
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Copyright 2013 Recreation Law (720) Edit Law
Email: Rec-law@recreation-law.com
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By Recreation Law Rec-law@recreation-law.comJames H. Moss #Authorrank
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[1] CJI-Civ. 9:9 (CLE Ed. 2009)
[2] ACA “Standards” are used by Expert for the Plaintiff in a lawsuit against a Camp, www.recreation-law.com
Recreation Law 