Court Opinion

ID: 9586943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:16:44.921538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:56.922677
License: Public Domain

Gregory, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because I believe it is wrong to relieve the defendants of the responsibility for their alleged failure to exercise due care on the theory that an eleven-year-old child who acts as any normal child would in enjoying a ride at an amusement park is, as a matter of law, charged with having knowledge of a danger associated with the ride and having intelligently acquiesced in that danger. W. Prosser, Law of Torts, 4th ed.,p. 441, § 68 (1971). The issue should be resolved by a jury.
Prosser has undertaken to define assumption of the risk in its simplest and primary sense. “... assumption of risk means that the plaintiff, in advance, has given his consent to relieve the defendant of an obligation of conduct toward him, and to take his chances of injury from a known risk arising from what the defendant is to do or leave undone.” Prosser, supra, p. 440. The defendants in this case invited this child, for a fee, to ride an amusement device which others were riding without mishap, and which he rode on several occasions without mishap. If there was no negligence on the part of the defendants which was the proximate cause of plaintiffs injuries, there can be no recovery. It was a legal accident. But assumption of the risk is quite another matter. Perhaps the majority was misled by the father’s statement quoted in the majority opinion. “The only thing that I can say that I feel makes it unsafe is the fact that my son was able to get hurt when, to the best of my knowledge, he was doing everything that he should have been doing to ride safely from the top to the bottom. Other than that, I can’t say what specifically could have been made safer.” This statement is an indication the father can point to no negligence on the part of defendants, but it does nothing *467to establish assumption of the risk. It does quite the opposite.