COUNTY WAS AFFORDED IMMUNITY HERE
After their family members were killed in an accident – when they hit a guide rail, slid down an embankment, and hit a tree -- PV and RF filed a personal-injury case against the County of Orange claiming that it was responsible for their wrongful deaths, due to alleged negligence associated with the “design and maintenance of the subject guide rail.”
When the Orange County Supreme Court later granted the County’s motion for summary judgment (dismissing the case), the plaintiffs appealed. And while the Appellate Division, Second Department, noted that a municipality is typically required to keep its highways in “reasonably safe condition,” immunity attaches when the “governmental planning body ‘has entertained and passed on the very same question of risk as would ordinarily go to the jury.’”
Since “the guide rail was designed pursuant to the design standards set forth by the New York State Department of Transportation, which were the result of a deliberative decision-making process of the type afforded immunity from judicial interference,” the AD2 concluded that the case had been properly dismissed.
Think the plaintiffs railed against that?
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DECISION