CAPTION: PARKER V. W.T.
09-20-17
APPEAL NO.: C-160642
TRIAL NO.: A-1405855
KEY WORDS: APPELLATE REVIEW/CIVIL – NEGLIGENCE
SUMMARY:
Where plaintiff elderly church guest, who was knocked down in the parking lot by a minor church guest playing football, brought a negligence claim against the father of the minor, alleging that he had violated his duty as a parent and as a church deacon to supervise his son and the other boys playing football in the parking lot, and where plaintiff subsequently withdrew her claim against the father in his parental capacity and settled her negligence claim against the church, and then challenged on appeal the grant of summary judgment to the father, but neglected to provide any argument, citation to legal authority, or reference to the record relating to the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the father, the appellate court will not address the challenge.
The trial court erred in granting summary judgment to defendant minor, who was playing football in the church parking lot with a group of boys and collided with plaintiff, who was walking through the parking lot, on the basis that he owed her no duty of care, because it was reasonably foreseeable that the minor, by running and playing football in a crowded parking lot, would create a risk of harm to other individuals who were walking through the parking lot, and the minor recognized the risk of harm to others.
Defendant minor was not entitled to summary judgment on the basis that plaintiff, who was walking through a crowded parking lot between church services, had proceeded into the “field of football” at her own risk where she was neither a participant in nor a spectator of a football game being played by children in the church parking lot.
Defendant minor was not entitled to summary judgment on the basis that a football game being played in a church parking lot was an “open and obvious” hazard, because the open-and-obvious doctrine is limited to persons with a property interest in the premises.
JUDGMENT: JUDGMENT AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND CAUSE REMANDED
JUDGES: OPINION by DETERS, J.; MOCK, P.J., and MILLER, J., CONCUR.