City Not Liable for Injuries from Cracked Sidewalk
The Illinois
Supreme Court recently held in Bruns v. City of Centralia, 2014 IL 116998, that
the City was not liable to a 79-year-old woman who stubbed her toe on a crack
in the sidewalk outside of her eye clinic, causing her to fall and injure her
arm, leg and knee.
The plaintiff admitted that she “definitely” noticed the
crack in the sidewalk every time she went to the eye clinic, but argued that
the distraction exception to the open and obvious rule should apply because she
was focused on the entrance to the eye clinic. According to the trial transcript, the sidewalk defect, caused by
the roots of a 100-year old tree, developed over a period of several years, but
the city refused to remove the sidewalk defect because of the 100-year-old
tree’s historic significance.
The trial court granted the City’s motion for
summary judgment finding that the sidewalk defect was open and obvious and, therefore, the City was immune from liability because it had no duty to protect the plaintiff. The court rejected plaintiff’s argument that the distraction exception applied because
allowing the mere existence of a store entrance to fall within the distraction
exception would go far beyond the scope of what exception’s intended purpose.
On appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed with the trial court, finding that the distraction exception to the open and obvious rule
did not apply and that the City had no duty to protect plaintiff from the open
and obvious sidewalk defect. The Court reasoned that the plaintiff failed to
provide any reason that required her to divert her attention away from the open
and obvious sidewalk defect; rather, the plaintiff simply had her attention
focused elsewhere.
Post Authored by Christy Michaelson, Ancel Glink
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