Thursday, January 16, 2025

Pucked

A delivery driver for a food processing company who delivered pies for a school Thanksgiving fundraiser and was injured by an errant hockey puck had his claims survive summary judgment in a decision of the New York Appellate Division for the Third Judicial Department

Evidence

A substitute teacher with over 30 years of physical education teaching experience was supervising the class, stationed in a penalty box on the opposite side of the rink from where Hankey was making his delivery. The teacher testified that she was scanning the class from the penalty box and calling out broomball infractions at the time of the incident. She had instructed the approximately four students who elected to participate in hockey skills that they were permitted to work on stick handling, passing and light shots on goal, one of which was set up in the standard location. She further instructed the students that they were not permitted to take slapshots and that she did not "want to hear anything hit off the boards."

Approximately five minutes into offloading pies, Hankey heard what he believed to be a hockey puck hit off a goalpost, almost immediately after which he was hit on the side of his head with a puck.

Triable issues

Defendant owed such a duty to Hankey, and defendant's own submissions reveal triable issues of fact as to whether it breached that duty. Defendant, by way of its agent, was aware of the subject delivery, the presence of a gym class in the facility at the time of the delivery and the fact that the class was engaging in hockey skills, among other activities. With this knowledge, the maintenance worker escorted Hankey into and through the facility to a location at mid-ice, where protections for those outside of the rink were the lowest, and instructed him to unload his delivery at that location. The gym teacher, also aware of Hankey, made no effort to further instruct her students or to increase her monitoring of those hitting hockey pucks. There are thus issues of fact as to whether the manner in which the subject delivery was handled was negligent and whether school personnel adequately monitored the activities in the facility so as to prevent foreseeable injuries to guests on the premises, such as Hankey (see Pendulik v East Hampton Union Free School Dist., 17 AD3d at 335). Additionally, in view of the fact that the activity at issue was not an ordinary hockey game and that Hankey was not a spectator who chose to occupy the location where he was allegedly injured, and considering that the only evidence regarding safety features were in the form of estimates from the maintenance worker, we further find that defendant has failed to demonstrate the absence of triable issues of fact as to whether the protections surrounding the rink were reasonable under the circumstances

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