Title: Rachael J. Butler, an infant, by her Parent and Guardian, Mary J. Butler v. City of Gloversville/Gloversville Enlarged 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. 116  
Rachael J. Butler, an infant, by 
her Parent and Guardian, Mary J. 
Butler, et al.,
            Appellants, 
        v. 
City of Gloversville, et al.,
            Defendants,
Gloversville Enlarged School 
District, et al.,
            Respondents.
Alan S. Zwiebel, for appellants.
Christopher K. Mills, for respondents.
MEMORANDUM:
The order of the Appellate Division should be reversed,
with costs, and the complaint reinstated against all defendants.
Plaintiff, a young girl, fractured her clavicle and
femur after falling off a playground slide on property owned and
maintained by defendants.  It is undisputed that at other
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No. 116
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playgrounds operated by defendants, protective ground cover, such
as pea stone, had been installed around playground equipment to
lessen injuries, as recommended in the U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission's (CPSC) Handbook for Public Playground Safety
and the American Society for Testing and Materials' (ASTM)
Standard Consumer Safety Performance Specification for Playground
Equipment for Public Use.  Plaintiff brought this personal injury
action alleging that the proximate cause of her injuries was
defendants' failure to use a recommended ground cover consistent
with the guidelines.
Defendants City of Gloversville and Enlarged School
District of Gloversville moved for summary judgment and dismissal
of plaintiff's complaint.  Supreme Court denied the motion,
concluding that the affidavit submitted by plaintiff's expert
raised an issue of fact requiring a trial.  The Appellate
Division reversed and granted summary judgment to all defendants,
searching the record as to those defendants who had not moved. 
Although the court held that there was an issue of fact regarding
defendants' duty to install ground cover, it concluded that
defendants' expert established that the lack of an adequate
ground cover was not the proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries. 
Two Justices dissented, finding that the conflicting expert
opinions presented questions of fact that precluded summary
judgment.
In our view, defendants failed to meet their initial
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No. 116
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burden of making a "prima facie showing of entitlement to
judgment as a matter of law" (Alvarez v Prospect Hosp., 68 NY2d
320, 324 [1986]).  Defendants' expert calculated that plaintiff
generated 480 foot-pounds of energy when she landed on the
ground.  Relying on prior research tests in which he used rubber
mats, defendants' expert stated that protective surfaces were not
sufficiently energy-absorbent to have prevented plaintiff's
fractures.  Despite the fact that the CPSC and ASTM guidelines
were based on the use of various ground covers in addition to
rubber mats, the expert opined that plaintiff would have been
injured even if the other types of recommended ground covers had
been installed.  He did not, however, provide a scientific or
mathematical foundation to substantiate this assertion, nor did
he address the shock-absorbing capacity of pea stone, the ground
cover used by defendants at their other playgrounds.  Summary
judgment was therefore not warranted since defendants failed to
sufficiently demonstrate that their alleged negligence was not a
proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries (see generally Romano v
Stanley, 90 NY2d 444, 451-452 [1997]). 
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order reversed, with costs, and complaint reinstated against all
defendants, in a memorandum. Chief Judge Lippman and Judges
Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Smith, Pigott and Jones concur.
Decided June 30, 2009