Stone v. Northmont City Sch.
| Decision Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Docket Number | 29271 |
| Citation | 187 N.E.3d 54 |
| Parties | Bruce STONE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants v. NORTHMONT CITY SCHOOLS, et al., Defendants-Appellees |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
JACK J. LAH, Atty. Reg. No. 0078474, 3033 Kettering Boulevard, Suite 213, Dayton, Ohio 45439, Attorney for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
BRIAN L. WILDERMUTH, Atty. Reg. No. 0066303 and ZACHARY J. CLOUTIER, Atty. Reg. No. 0097160, 50 Chestnut Street, Suite 230, Dayton, Ohio 45440, Attorneys for Defendants-Appellees.
{¶ 1} Appellants Bruce and Gail Stone appeal from the trial court's judgment granting summary judgment in favor of Appellees Northmont City Schools ("NCS") and its employee, Lori Barnes, and dismissing the Stones’ complaint for personal injuries based upon recreational user immunity pursuant to R.C. 1533.181. We hereby affirm the judgment of the trial court.
{¶ 2} On August 23, 2019, Bruce was riding a bicycle on a bike trial open to the public along National Road in Clayton, near the Northmont Middle School and Northmont High School Complex. Bruce rode his bike into a rope "securely attached on each side of the bike trail," several feet off the surface of the trail, causing him to fall and sustain serious and permanent injuries. The Stones alleged that the rope was negligently placed by Lori Barnes, while acting in the course of her employment at NCS, and that NCS was vicariously liable for Bruce's injuries. The Stones filed claims for negligence and loss of consortium on February 3, 2020, seeking in excess of $25,000 in damages.
{¶ 3} NCS and Barnes answered the complaint on March 4, 2020, and they filed a motion for summary judgment on February 8, 2021. In their motion, they argued that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law because they were immune from civil liability under Ohio's recreational user statute, R.C. 1533.181, because "a defect in the condition of the premises" caused Bruce's injury. NCS and Barnes further asserted that, if the Stones were contending that their injuries were due to Barnes's negligence, rather than a condition of the premises, they were immune from liability under R.C. Chapter 2744, Ohio's political subdivision immunity statute. NCS and Barnes requested that the court dismiss the Stones’ complaint.
{¶ 4} The Stones attached an affidavit of Brandon Knecht, the Director of Business Services for NCS, to their motion for summary judgment. Knecht averred as follows:
Attached to the affidavit were copies of the "Multi-Use Path Easement Agreement" between the Board of Education of the Northmont School District and the City of Clayton, the "Memorandum of Understanding" for the multi-use path project, and the "Maintenance Agreement" for the multi-use path project.
{¶ 5} The Stones opposed the motion for summary judgment, arguing that "a thin rope suspended over and across the end of a blind curve in a paved trail routinely used by bicyclists traveling at a rate of dozens of miles per hour is not a defect in the premises. " According to the Stones, because NCS failed to demonstrate that Bruce was injured by a defect in the premises, it was not immune from liability, and its motion for summary judgment should have been denied.
{¶ 6} The Stones asserted that Bruce had been cycling for 10 or 15 years and that his typical route "included riding through a residential neighborhood to connect with the National Trail," which "runs parallel to National Road and toward Northmont middle and high schools." On August 23, 2019, Bruce was "riding a loop," which took about 30 minutes to complete, and his pace was about 15 miles per hour; Bruce was on his fourth loop of the morning when his accident occurred. Specifically, they asserted that, as Bruce was cycling out of a sharp curve along the trail, he "unexpectedly encountered a white rope suspended over the trail" that "caught his bike," and he fell to the ground. The Stones argued that Bruce had no reason to anticipate the rope's presence. They further asserted that, while Bruce was in pain on the ground, Barnes approached him, admitted she had put the rope in place, and apologized. (Barnes was the middle school cross-country coach.) The Stones did not dispute that Bruce was a recreational user pursuant to R.C. 1533.18(B), but they did dispute that he was a recreational user injured by a defect in the premises.
{¶ 7} The Stones further asserted that NCS and Barnes were not entitled to summary judgment pursuant to R.C. Chap. 2744. They argued that the "assembly of a running course is an act by an employee of a political subdivision that is designed to promote [the] health of public school students."
{¶ 8} NCS and Barnes filed a reply asserting that the "proposed distinction that recreational use immunity is inapplicable if the claimed injury involved an aboveground object is unsupported by Ohio law." NCS and Barnes also asserted that the Stones had not established an exception to political subdivision immunity, and Barnes was immune from liability for negligence under R.C. 2744.03(A)(6).
{¶ 9} NCS and Barnes asserted that the "Ohio Supreme Court has recognized the application of recreational user immunity in cases involving objects above the ground or suspended in the air." NCS and Barnes argued that the Stones’ proposed distinction found no support in the plain language of the recreational user statute, which does not draw any distinction between subsurface and aboveground defects that render a premises unsafe; the statute states generally that an owner has no duty to keep the premises safe. NCS and Barnes argued that Bruce sustained injury as a result of an existing condition on the Northmont Middle School grounds and that it was immaterial how long the condition had been present. "At the time of the cycling accident, the roping had been installed and had become a condition of the premises." According to NCS and Barnes, pursuant to the Stones’ reasoning, "objects like fences and tennis court nets would be exempt from [the] recreational user status simply because they extended above the ground and into the air."
{¶ 10} NCS and Barnes argued that they were entitled to summary judgment under R.C. Chapter 2744. They asserted that the Stones had failed to address, and therefore had waived, "any opposition to * * * the issue of whether Barnes [was] entitled to summary judgment in her favor under R.C. 2744.03(A)(6)(b)." According to NCS, the Stones had not challenge whether the roping across the trail qualified as a physical defect under R.C. 2744.02(B)(4), and thus they had waived any responsive arguments on that issue as well. NCS and Barnes asserted that Ohio law supports the conclusion that that Barnes's assembly of the racecourse was a governmental function, not a proprietary function, and that Ohio courts have held that public school athletics and extracurricular activities fall within the "provision of a system of public education."
{¶ 11} The trial court sustained NCS and Barnes's motion for summary judgment. The court noted that the issue before it boiled down to the character of the rope: "whether the rope strung across the Northmont Trail was a condition in the premises for purposes of the recreational user statute, and if not, whether this rope was a physical defect in the premises for purposes of the sovereign immunity statutes." The court noted that Barnes, the middle school cross-country coach, had strung the rope across the trail between two white stakes in order to mark the cross-county course for a race that was taking place the next day. The Northmont High School cross-country coach (who was Barnes's husband) had described the rope that was used as being visible "50 to 100 meters ahead," and said that it had been strung where it was following a course design created by the Athletic Director and Mr. Barnes. According to Mr. Barnes, he had worked with the head cross-country coach at Miami Valley CTC, who had at least 40 years of experience designing cross-country courses, to design Northmont's course. The same cross-country course had been used for two meets in 2018. There was some disagreement as to who knew that the white stakes and rope marking the course were strung across the trail the day before the meet. The trail is not closed to the public until the day of the meet; at that point, a table is set up at the beginning of the pathway in order to collect money from spectators.
{¶ 12} In sustaining NCS and Barnes's motion for summary judgment, the trial court found that no genuine...
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