By Carla Varriale-Barker
The Supreme Court, Suffolk County granted defendant amusement park L.I. Adventureland’s (“Adventureland”) motion for summary judgment and dismissed a negligence action brought against it as the result of the sudden stoppage of “The Hurricane” roller coaster. Plaintiffs alleged that The Hurricane malfunctioned, lost electrical power, and stopped prior to the ride’s conclusion. Plaintiffs claimed that Adventureland was negligent in the operation, maintenance, and control of The Hurricane, among other things. In dismissing plaintiffs’ negligence action, the court determined that Adventureland did not create or have notice of the condition alleged by plaintiffs. The court also revisited the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur and held that it did not apply to this case even if Adventureland was aware of the same, the mere general awareness that The Hurricane would stop if there was a sudden electrical brownout or a power surge, that was not an instrumentality under Adventureland’s exclusive control.
The Hurricane is an electric roller coaster with a pneumatic braking system at the end of the track. On the date of the alleged incident, The Hurricane came to a sudden stop and infant plaintiff was forced to disembark from the roller coaster after approximately fifteen minutes by using a ride-specific ladder supplied by an Adventureland employee. She had not observed anything amiss with The Hurricane before the incident.
Adventureland met its burden of the movant for summary judgment by producing deposition testimony of its employees (including the operator of The Hurricane), an affidavit from its operations manager regarding the absence of prior complaints or similar incidents and its inspection reports showing that The Hurricane was duly inspected using New York State Department of Labor required forms, and that it was found to be in good working order prior to the date of the alleged incident. Adventureland demonstrated it did not create or have either actual or constructive notice of the alleged dangerous condition. Adventureland posited that in the event of an electrical brownout or a power surge, attractions will stop as safety measure.
In opposition, plaintiffs failed to raise a triable issue of material fact. For example, plaintiffs presented no evidence that Adventureland somehow created or had either actual or constructive notice of the alleged dangerous condition. Likewise, there was no evidence that Adventureland received any complaints about The Hurricane, or that the alleged dangerous condition was visible and apparent and existed before the alleged incident for Adventureland to discover it and remedy it. Adventureland’s general awareness that there were occasions when The Hurricane stopped working prior to the alleged incident due to electrical disturbances was insufficient to constitute notice of the condition that caused The Hurricane to stop while infant plaintiff was a passenger. Therefore, the court dismissed plaintiffs’ negligence action.
The Application of The Doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur
The court further held that res ipsa loquitur did not apply to the novel facts of this case. In tort law, res ipsa loquitur (Latin for “the thing speaks for itself”) means that the mere occurrence of an accident implies negligence. Under appropriate circumstances, the evidentiary doctrine of res ipsa loquitur may be invoked to allow a jury to infer negligence from the mere happening of an event. However, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur does not create a presumption of negligence, although the doctrine does permit the inference of negligence from the mere happening of an event. In other words, it is a rule of circumstantial evidence that permits, but does not require, a jury to infer negligence.
Moreover, reliance on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, requires that the accident must (1) be of a kind that does not ordinarily occur in the absence of negligence, (2) be caused by an agency or instrumentality within defendant’s exclusive control, and (3) not have been due to any voluntary action or contribution of the plaintiff.
In this case, the court determined that the thing did not speak for itself, thus Adventureland established that plaintiffs could not rely on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur as they could not establish each of the three requisite elements. Assuming the alleged incident occurred because of a sudden electrical disturbance such as a power surge or a brownout, as alleged by plaintiffs, an inference of negligence was not warranted. This was the sort of incident that could occur in the absence of negligence and was not caused by an instrumentality within Adventureland’s exclusive control. Therefore, plaintiffs could not rely upon res ipsa loquitur.
Carla Varriale-Barker is a shareholder in the New York office of Segal McCambridge Singer & Mahoney, Ltd. She represented L.I. Adventureland in this action. Her practice focuses on the sports, entertainment, amusement and hospitality industries. She can be reached at cvarriale@smsm.com.
