Iowans might need to keep a closer eye on their weather after the state Supreme Court ruled that property owners who left trampoline parts unsecured in their yard can be sued over an accident caused by the parts being blown onto an adjacent road.

A passing motorist who lost control of his car and crashed on encountering the trampoline parts in the road sued James Kaczinski and Michelle Lockwood for negligence, alleging they had a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent their personal property from obstructing the road and to remove it within a reasonable time.

During the night of Sept. 16, 2006 and the following morning of Sept. 17, a severe thunderstorm had passed through rural Madison County, Iowa, and wind gusts from the storm blew the top of the trampoline onto the road. Later on Sept. 17, Charles Thompson drove his car into a ditch while swerving to avoid the obstruction.

Kaczinski and Lockwood argued they could not be held liable for Thompson's injuries because the risk that the trampoline would be displaced from the yard to the road by the wind was not foreseeable. A trial court judge agreed with them and summarily dismissed the case in March 2008.

But in a Nov. 13 opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court said the case could go to trial on the issue of whether “a serious injury to a motorist was within the range of harms risked by disassembling the trampoline and leaving it untethered for a few weeks on the yard less than forty feet from the road.”

Justice Hecht

“A reasonable fact finder could determine Kaczinski and Lockwood should have known high winds occasionally occur in Iowa in September and a strong gust of wind could displace the unsecured trampoline parts the short distance from the yard to the roadway and endanger motorists,” Justice Daryl Hecht wrote for the court.

Kaczinski and Lockwood were sleeping when the injured Thompson awoke them with his screams at about 9:40 a.m. on Sept. 17. “Although they were in their home for several hours after the storm passed and approximately two-and-a-half hours after daybreak, Kaczinski and Lockwood did not discover their property on the nearby roadway, remove it, or warn approaching motorists of it,” Hecht noted.

According to meteorological records, the storm packed gale-force winds gusting to more than 40 mph. The defense could argue at trial that those gusts were above what would normally be expected at that time of year in Iowa.

The Supreme Court set a major precedent in Thompson v. Kaczinski by declaring its approval of the “risk standard” for determining “proximate cause” in negligence cases. The standard requires courts to consider the range of harms risked by the defendant’s conduct and whether the plaintiff's injury was a result of any of those risks.

Iowa had previously applied the test which, under the Restatement (Second) of Torts, says that “[t]he actor’s negligent conduct is a legal cause of harm to another if (a) his conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the harm, and (b) there is no rule of law relieving the actor from liability.”

That test “causes considerable confusion for juries,” Hecht said, and “We ... are persuaded by [the] explanation of the advantages of applying the risk standard as articulated in the Restatement (Third), and, accordingly, adopt it.”

By Matthew Heller
11/15/09