Buehler v. Newtown

Citations

• 206 Conn. App. 472

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendants, the town of Newtown and various school employees, for personal injuries he sustained when he fell from a referee stand while officiating a public high school volleyball match. The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that they had shown that their allegedly negligent actions were discretionary, and thus they enjoyed governmental immu- nity, and that the plaintiff did not fall within the identifiable person- imminent harm exception to the governmental immunity doctrine. The trial court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, finding that the plaintiff, a volleyball referee, was not legally compelled to be on school premises at the time of his injury, and, accordingly, he was not an identifiable person to whom the identifiable person-imminent harm exception applied. On the plaintiff's appeal to this court, held that the trial court properly determined that no genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the plaintiff was an identifiable victim who fell within the identifiable person-imminent harm exception to the gov- ernmental immunity doctrine: the only identifiable class of foreseeable victims that our Supreme Court has recognized is that of schoolchildren attending public schools during school hours, and an assignment to officiate a volleyball game after school hours is nothing like the legal compulsion imposed by our statutes that require a child's attendance at school; moreover, the plaintiff conceded that he had the option to accept or to deny the refereeing assignment, which made his presence on the premises voluntary; furthermore, it would have been improper to extend the identifiable victim classification, particularly because the student athletes participating in the volleyball game over which the plaintiff officiated would not themselves enjoy such a designation under existing law, and there was no doctrinal justification for treating the plaintiff differen