Kumar v. Sevastos

Citations

• 174 N.E.3d 398
• 2021 Ohio 1885

Syllabus

Summary judgment negligence assumption of the risk recklessness duty sports soccer open and obvious attendant circumstances. In a negligence action following an injury during a soccer game, summary judgment was appropriate for the defendant who participated in the game and slide tackled the plaintiff, another participant, causing him to collide with a boundary wall and sustain an injury. The defendant's slide tackle was a foreseeable and customary part of the sport. A sport participant assumes the inherent risks of the sport and cannot recover absent a showing that the defendant's actions were reckless or intentional. Here there was no evidence that the defendant intentionally or recklessly caused the injury. Summary judgment was appropriate for the defendant-owner of the facility where the injury was sustained because the owner owed no duty to the plaintiff to warn him of any danger posed by an open-and-obvious boundary wall. Neither the slide tackle nor the boundary wall itself were attendant circumstances that created an exception to the open-and-obvious doctrine to the extent that neither were a significant distraction that would divert the attention of a reasonable person in the same situation and reduce the care exercised to avoid the hazard.