Title: Luke Anthony Trupia, an Infant, By His Parent and Guardian, Lawrence C. Trupia v. Lake George Central School District

State: new-york

Issuer: New York Appellate Court

Document:

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This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 53  
Luke Anthony Trupia, an Infant, 
By His Parent and Guardian, 
Lawrence C. Trupia, et al.,
            Respondents,
        v.
Lake George Central School 
District, et al.,
            Appellants.
Benjamin R. Pratt, Jr., for appellants.
Peter K. Ledwith, for respondents.
LIPPMAN, Chief Judge:
While attending a summer program administered by
defendants on their premises, the infant plaintiff, Luke Anthony
Trupia, rode and ultimately fell from a bannister, injuring
himself seriously.  The complaint seeks to recover principally
upon a theory of negligent supervision; it alleges that at the
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time of the accident Luke, then not yet 12 years of age, had been
left wholly unsupervised.  This appeal arises from defendants'
motion, granted by Supreme Court, but subsequently denied in the
order we now review, to amend their answer to allege assumption
of risk; defendants propose to seek dismissal of the action upon
the ground that Luke may be deemed to have consented in advance
to the risks involved in sliding down a bannister, among them
falling from the railing, something which, evidently, had
happened to him before.
The Appellate Division denied the sought amendment upon
the ground that, under its cases and those of its First
Department counterpart, the assumption of risk doctrine is not
generally applicable in negligence actions to nullify a
defendant's duty, but is appropriately interposed only to shield
a defendant from exposure to liability arising from risks
inhering in athletic and recreational activities (62 AD3d 67 [3d
Dept 2009]).  The Court did, however, note that the Second and
Fourth Departments had permitted broader use of the doctrine, and
presumably granted defendants leave to appeal from its unanimous
decision so that the inter-departmental inconsistency over the
applicability of the doctrine might be resolved.  We now answer
the question consequently certified to us by the Appellate
Division -- whether it erred "in reversing, on the law, the order
of the Supreme Court by denying defendants' motion for leave to
amend their answer to include the affirmative defense of primary
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assumption of risk?" -- in the negative.
  In 1975, following this Court's decision in Dole v
Dow Chem. Co. (30 NY2d 143 [1972]), where we held, in part, that
the "[r]ight to apportionment of liability . . . as among parties
involved together in causing damage by negligence, should rest on
relative responsibility and . . . be determined on the facts" (at
153), the Legislature abolished contributory negligence and
assumption of risk as absolute defenses and provided instead
that: 
"In any action to recover damages for
personal injury, injury to property, or
wrongful death, the culpable conduct
attributable to the claimant or to the
decedent, including contributory negligence
or assumption of risk, shall not bar
recovery, but the amount of damages otherwise
recoverable shall be diminished in the
proportion which the culpable conduct
attributable to the claimant or decedent
bears to the culpable conduct which caused
the damages"
(CPLR 1411 [emphasis added]).  Nonetheless, assumption of risk
has survived as a bar to recovery.  The theory upon which its
retention has been explained and upon which it has been
harmonized with the now dominant doctrine of comparative
causation is that, by freely assuming a known risk, a plaintiff
commensurately negates any duty on the part of the defendant to
safeguard him or her from the risk (see Turcotte v Fell, 68 NY2d
432, 438-439 [1986]).  The doctrine, then, is thought of as
limiting duty through consent -- indeed, it has been described a
"principle of no duty" rather than an absolute defense based upon
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a plaintiff's culpable conduct (id. at 438; accord Morgan v State
of New York, 90 NY2d 471, 485 [1997]) -- and, as thus
conceptualized can, at least in theory, co-exist with the
comparative causation regimen.  The reality, however, is that the
effect of the doctrine's application is often not different from
that which would have obtained by resort to the complete defenses
purportedly abandoned with the advent of comparative causation --
culpable conduct on the part of a defendant causally related to a
plaintiff's harm is rendered non-actionable by reason of culpable
conduct on the plaintiff's part that does not entirely account
for the complained of harm.  While it may be theoretically
satisfying to view such conduct by a plaintiff as signifying
consent, in most contexts this is a highly artificial construct
and all that is actually involved is a result-oriented
application of a complete bar to recovery.  Such a renaissance of
contributory negligence replete with all its common-law potency
is precisely what the comparative negligence statute was enacted
to avoid.
The doctrine of assumption of risk does not, and cannot,
sit comfortably with comparative causation.  In the end, its
retention is most persuasively justified not on the ground of
doctrinal or practical compatibility, but simply for its utility
in "facilitat[ing] free and vigorous participation in athletic
activities" (Benitez v New York City Bd. of Educ., 73 NY2d 650,
657 [1989]; Morgan, 90 NY2d at 484; see Turcotte, 68 NY2d at 439.)
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We have recognized that athletic and recreative activities
possess enormous social value, even while they involve
significantly heightened risks, and have employed the notion that
these risks may be voluntarily assumed to preserve these
beneficial pursuits as against the prohibitive liability to which
they would otherwise give rise.  We have not applied the doctrine
outside of this limited context and it is clear that its
application must be closely circumscribed if it is not seriously
to undermine and displace the principles of comparative causation
(see Arbegast v Board of Educ. of S. New Berlin Cent. School, 65
NY2d 161, 168 [1985]) that the Legislature has deemed applicable
to "any action to recover damages for personal injury, injury to
property, or wrongful death" (CPLR 1411 [emphasis added]). 
  
No suitably compelling policy justification has been
advanced to permit an assertion of assumption of risk in the
present circumstances.  The injury-producing activity here at
issue, referred to by the parties as "horseplay," is not one that
recommends itself as worthy of protection, particularly not in
its "free and vigorous" incarnation, and there is, moreover, no
nexus between the activity and defendants' auspices, except
perhaps negligence.  This is, in short, not a case in which the
defendant solely by reason of having sponsored or otherwise
supported some risk-laden but socially valuable voluntary
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No. 53
*This does not, of course, mean that the doctrine is
applicable wherever these conditions are met; they are threshold
conditions only.  The doctrine's application will also
necessarily depend upon whether, under the particular
circumstances, the plaintiff may be said to have freely and
knowingly consented to assume the risks of a qualifying activity. 
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activity has been called to account in damages.*
 
Allowing the defense here would have particularly
unfortunate consequences.  Little would remain of an educational
institution's obligation adequately to supervise the children in
its charge (see Mirand v City of New York, 84 NY2d 44, 49 [1994])
if school children could generally be deemed to have consented in
advance to risks of their misconduct.  Children often act
impulsively or without good judgment -- that is part of being a
child; they do not thereby consent to assume the consequently
arising dangers, and it would not be a prudent rule of law that
would broadly permit the conclusion that they had done so.  If
the infant plaintiff's harm is attributable in some measure to
his own conduct, and not to negligence on defendants' part, that
would be appropriately taken account of within a comparative
fault allocation; it is not a predicate upon which an assumption
of risk should be permitted to be applied.
We do not hold that children may never assume the risks
of activities, such as athletics, in which they freely and
knowingly engage, either in or out of school -- only that the
inference of such an assumption as a ground for exculpation may
not be made in their case, or for that matter where adults are
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concerned, except in the context of pursuits both unusually risky
and beneficial that the defendant has in some non-culpable way
enabled.  
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should
be affirmed, with costs, and the certified question answered in
the negative.
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Trupia v Lake George Central School District
No. 53 
SMITH, J. (Concurring):
This seems to me an extremely easy case.  Assumption of
risk cannot possibly be a defense here, because it is absurd to
say that a  12-year-old boy "assumed the risk" that his teachers
would fail to supervise him.  That is a risk a great many
children would happily assume, but they are not allowed to assume
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it for the same reason that the duty to supervise exists in the
first place: Children are not mature, and it is for adults, not
children, to decide how much supervision they need.
The majority makes this point, which is enough to
dispose of the case, near the end of its opinion (majority op at
6: "Little would remain of an educational institution's
obligation adequately to supervise the children in its charge . .
. if school children could generally be deemed to have consented
in advance to risks of their misconduct").  The rest of the
majority opinion is, in my view, an extended dictum, which seems
to say that the assumption of risk defense is largely if not
entirely limited to cases involving "athletic and recreative
activities" (majority op at 5).
The majority's dictum invites a number of questions
that the majority makes no attempt to answer.  Most obvious among
them: What exactly is "athletic or recreative" activity?  Indeed,
why was Luke Trupia's chosen activity -- sliding down a banister
-- not "recreative"?  He was obviously doing it for fun.  The
majority says that "athletic and recreative activities possess
enormous social value" (majority op at 5) -- a value that
presumably does not inhere in banister sliding.  But why exactly
is sliding down a banister (supposing it to be done by an adult
with a taste for such amusement) of less "social value" than
sliding down a ski slope or bobsled run?  And if the latter
activities are more socially valuable than the former, why is the
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banister slider, who chose the less desirable form of amusement,
in a better position to recover damages than the skier or
bobsledder?  
Assumption of risk in tort law is a hard idea to
understand, and I do not imply that the majority's understanding
of it is necessarily wrong.  There may be perfectly good answers
to the questions I have asked, and to the many others that could
be asked about this subject.  But I think it is a mistake to make
sweeping pronouncements in a case that does not require it, while
ignoring the questions those sweeping pronouncements raise.    
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order affirmed, with costs, and certified question answered in
the negative.  Opinion by Chief Judge Lippman.  Judges Ciparick,
Graffeo and Jones concur.  Judge Smith concurs in result in an
opinion in which Judges Read and Pigott concur.
Decided April 6, 2010