Korzenski v. Dunkirk Radiator Corp.

• Decision Date: 19 November 1964
• Parties: , 203 N.E.2d 489 Daniel KORZENSKI, an infant, by his Guardian ad Litem, Bernard Korzenski, Appellant, v. DUNKIRK RADIATOR CORPORATION, Respondent.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 94

255 N.Y.S.2d 94

15 N.Y.2d 575, 203 N.E.2d 489

Daniel KORZENSKI, an infant, by his Guardian ad Litem, Bernard Korzenski, Appellant, v. DUNKIRK RADIATOR CORPORATION, Respondent.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 19, 1964.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, 19 A.D.2d 770, 241 N.Y.S.2d 737.

Infant, by his guardian ad litem, brought action against landowner for loss of infant's eye which was struck by fishhook of fisherman who was attempting to cast his line into pond, which had been created when landowner made excavation in which water eventually accumulated.

The Supreme Court, Trial Term, Chautauqua County, William B. Lawless, J., entered a judgment for the infant, and the landowner appealed.

The Appellate Division entered an order reversing the judgment on the law and the facts and dismissing the complaint and held that the infant was not an invitee, and that landowner owed infant only the duty to exercise reasonable care to disclose dangerous defects known to landowner and not likely to be discovered by the infant, and that the infant's injury was not caused by any affirmative act of negligence on part of the landowner or by the existence of and trap or pitfall, and that injury was caused by the fisherman's act, which was an unforeseeable intervening cause producing a result that could not have been foreseen by landowner, thereby relieving the landowner from liability. Halpern, J., dissented.

The infant appealed to the Court of Appeals.

Judgment affirmed, without costs.

All concur.