Hendrickson v. Ryan

Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court (Meddaugh, J.), entered November 17, 1998 in Sullivan County, which, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint.

In March 1997, plaintiffs were vacationing without charge at a house owned by defendant in Florida. The parties are related by marriage as defendant’s daughter is married to plaintiffs’ son. During her stay, plaintiff Elizabeth Hendrickson (hereinafter plaintiff) broke her arm as the result of a fall in defendant’s backyard when she allegedly tripped over a lawn sprinkler head that had failed to retract into the ground, one of several that comprised the property’s automatic sprinkler system.^[1] Plaintiff and her spouse, derivatively, commenced this negligence action in Supreme Court, Sullivan County, the county in which all of the parties are domiciled. Following discovery, defendant moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint. In the decision under review, Supreme Court first ruled that the law of Florida, as the place where the cause of action arose, would govern its adjudication of this matter. The court then denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint.

Defendant appeals, contending that plaintiffs failed to show the existence of a triable issue of fact. We cannot agree. Under the laws of both this State and Florida, a landowner owes to individuals who are foreseeably present on the property a duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition and a duty to warn of concealed dangers of which the landowner is or should be aware (see, Basso v Miller, 40 NY2d 233 , 241; Houck