Lead Opinion
Plaintiff, who fractured her wrist on a bumper car ride at an amusement park, sued the park owner for negligence in not configuring or operating the bumper car ride so as to prevent her injury. The superior court granted summary judgment for defendant on the basis of the primary assumption of risk doctrine, under which participants in and operators of certain activities have no duty of ordinary care to protect other participants from risks inherent in the activity. (Knight v. Jewett (1992)
We conclude the primary assumption of risk doctrine, though most frequently applied to sports, applies as well to certain other recreational activities including bumper car rides. We further conclude the doctrine applies to the ride here, even though amusement parks are subject to state safety regulations and even though, as to some rides, park owners owe participants the heightened duty of care of a common carrier for reward. (See Gomez v. Superior Court (2005)
Factual and Procedural Background
On July 5, 2005, plaintiff, Dr. Smriti Nalwa, took her nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter to Great America amusement park, owned and operated by defendant Cedar Fair, L.P. In the afternoon, plaintiff and her children went on the park’s Rue le Dodge bumper car ride.
The ride consisted of small, two-seat, electrically powered vehicles that moved around a flat surface. Each car was ringed with a rubber bumper and had a padded interior and seatbelts for both driver and passenger. The driver of each car controlled its steering and acceleration.
Plaintiff rode as a passenger in a bumper car her son drove, while her daughter drove a car by herself. Plaintiff’s son steered while plaintiff sat next to him in the bumper car; they bumped into several other cars during the course of the ride. Toward the end of the ride, plaintiff’s bumper car was bumped from the front and then from behind. Feeling a need to brace herself, plaintiff put her hand on the car’s “dashboard.” According to plaintiff’s son, “something like cracked” and plaintiff cried out, “Oh.” Plaintiff’s wrist was fractured.
Head-on bumping was prohibited on the Rue le Dodge ride, a safety rule the ride operators were to enforce by lecturing those they saw engaging in the practice and, if a guest persisted in head-on bumping, by stopping the ride and asking the person to leave. At the time of plaintiff’s injury, defendant operated the bumper car rides at its four other amusement parks so that the cars could be driven in only one direction.
In her operative complaint, plaintiff pleaded causes of action for common carrier liability, willful misconduct, strict products liability (in two counts) and negligence, but later dismissed the two products liability counts. The trial court granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on the remaining causes of action, concluding the primary assumption of risk doctrine barred recovery for negligence because plaintiff’s injury arose from being bumped, a risk inherent in the activity of riding bumper cars. The heightened duty of care for common carriers did not apply, the trial court found, because defendant had no control over the steering and orientation of the individual bumper cars, nor was there any willful misconduct as defendant did not act with knowledge or reckless disregard of a likely injury.
The Court of Appeal reversed in a divided decision, holding that the public policy of promoting safety at amusement parks precludes application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine, and the doctrine is inapplicable to bumper car rides in particular because that activity is “too benign” to be considered a “sport.” Even if the doctrine applied to the Rue le Dodge ride, the court further reasoned, defendant could have reduced the ride’s risks by configuring it to minimize head-on collisions. The dissenting justice argued the primary assumption of risk doctrine is not limited to those activities deemed “sports”; that its application to an amusement park ride does not violate any discemable public policy; and that the risk of injury from any collision, including head-on bumping, is inherent in the activity of riding bumper cars.
We granted defendant’s petition for review.
Discussion
A motion for summary judgment “shall be granted if all the papers submitted show that there is no triable issue as to any material fact and that
“On review of an order granting or denying summary judgment, we examine the facts presented to the trial court and determine their effect as a matter of law. . . . [Djefendant asserted, and the trial court found, that plaintiff’s evidence failed to establish the ‘duty’ element of plaintiff’s cause of action for negligence. Duty, being a question of law, is particularly amenable to resolution by summary judgment.” (Parsons v. Crown Disposal Co. (1997)
We must decide whether, as a matter of law and on the undisputed facts presented to the trial court, the primary assumption of risk doctrine relieved defendant, as operator of the Rue le Dodge ride, of its duty of ordinary care to protect plaintiff, a participant on the ride, from the risk of injuries resulting from the collision or collisions that fractured her wrist.
I. Application of Primary Assumption of Risk to “Nonsport” Recreational Activities
“Although persons generally owe a duty of due care not to cause an unreasonable risk of harm to others (Civ. Code, § 1714, subd. (a)), some activities—and, specifically, many sports—are inherently dangerous. Imposing a duty to mitigate those inherent dangers could alter the nature of the activity or inhibit vigorous participation.” (Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist. (2003)
The parties disagree, first, as to whether a bumper car ride is among the activities to which the doctrine of primary assumption of risk applies. Plaintiff argues the doctrine, as an exception to the general duty of ordinary care, is properly limited to certain narrow categories, one of which is active sports. Plaintiff embraces the Court of Appeal majority’s assessment that
Defendant maintains the doctrine of primary assumption of risk is not limited to sports and should apply to amusement park rides that involve inherent risks of injury, including bumper cars, because imposing a duty to minimize inherent risks would tend to change the nature of such rides or cause their abandonment. In defendant’s view, a duty to minimize the inherent risk of injury from bumper car rides would “requir[e] amusement park operators to eliminate their existing rides and to replace them with rides that are fundamentally different,” contrary to the policy motivating this court’s primary assumption of risk decisions, that of preventing common law tort rules from undermining Californians’ recreational opportunities. For reasons explained below, we agree with defendant.
This court’s seminal decision explicating and applying primary assumption of risk in the recreational context, Knight v. Jewett, involved a sporting activity, an informal game of touch football. (Knight v. Jewett, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 300 (Knight).) In applying the doctrine in that case, therefore, we naturally addressed its use in “the sports setting,” explaining that certain dangers are often integral to “the sport itself’ and that defendants generally have no duty to protect a plaintiff from “risks inherent in the sport itself.” (Id. at p. 315.) But in outlining the doctrine generally, we used broader language, referring to “the nature of the activity or sport” (id. at p. 309), “a potentially dangerous activity or sport” (id. at p. 311), and “risks inherent in the activity or sport itself’ (ibid.).
While our subsequent decisions applying the doctrine to recreation have, like Knight, involved sports,
In contrast, a few courts have, like the appellate court below, cited the nonsport character of an activity as one ground for not bringing it within the primary assumption of risk doctrine. (Kindrich v. Long Beach Yacht Club (2008)
We agree with the dissenting justice below, and the court in Beninati, that the primary assumption of risk doctrine is not limited to activities classified as sports, but applies as well to other recreational activities “involving an inherent risk of injury to voluntary participants . . . where the risk cannot be eliminated without altering the fundamental nature of the activity.” (Beninati v. Black Rock City, LLC, supra,
The primary assumption of risk doctrine rests on a straightforward policy foundation: the need to avoid chilling vigorous participation in or sponsorship of recreational activities by imposing a tort duty to eliminate or reduce the risks of harm inherent in those activities. It operates on the premise that imposing such a legal duty “would work a basic alteration—or cause abandonment” of the activity. (Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist., supra,
The policy behind primary assumption of risk applies squarely to injuries from physical recreation, whether in sports or nonsport activities. Allowing voluntary participants in an active recreational pursuit to sue other participants or sponsors for failing to eliminate or mitigate the activity’s inherent risks would threaten the activity’s very existence and nature. In thus concluding, we do not “expand the doctrine to any activity with an inherent risk,” as the majority below cautioned.
The doctrine thus applies to bumper car collisions, regardless of whether or not one deems bumper cars a “sport.” Low-speed collisions between the padded, independently operated cars are inherent in—are the whole point of—a bumper car ride. As plaintiff agreed in her deposition: “The point of the bumper car is to bump—[f] . . . [f] You pretty much can’t have a bumper car unless you have bumps.” While not highly dangerous, such collisions, resulting in sudden changes in speed and direction, do carry an inherent risk of minor injuries, and this risk cannot be eliminated without changing the basic character of the activity. In the words of the dissenting justice below: “Imposing liability would have the likely effect of the amusement. park either eliminating the ride altogether or altering its character to such a degree—by, for example, significantly decreasing the speed at which the minicars could operate—that the fun of bumping would be eliminated,
As she did in Knight and several cases since, Justice Kennard dissents here from application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine. (Dis. opn. of Kennard, J., post, at pp. 1164-1165.) In light of the dissenter’s consistent urging that we return to the traditional consent-based assumption of risk defense, it is worth reiterating some of the reasons given in Knight for abandoning that defense in favor of a limited-duty rule. (See Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 311-313.)
The dissent argues that the question of which risks are inherent in a recreational activity is fact intensive and hence unsuitable for resolution as a matter of law, especially on a demurrer or a defense motion for summary judgment. (Dis. opn. of Kennard, J., post, at pp. 1166-1167.) We disagree. Judges deciding inherent risk questions under Knight may consider not only their own or common experience with the recreational activity involved but may also consult case law, other published materials, and documentary evidence introduced by the parties on a motion for summary judgment. (See Avila v. Citrus Community College Dist., supra, 38 Cal.4th at pp. 163-165; Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist., supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 999, 1011-1012, 1017; cf. Cabral v. Ralphs Grocery Co. (2011)
II. Application of Primary Assumption of Risk to an Amusement Park Ride
Plaintiff, however, contends that because amusement park rides are the subject of state regulations for safety and inspection, and because operators of some rides have been considered common carriers for reward, public policy precludes applying the primary assumption of risk doctrine to amusement park rides generally, including the bumper cars on which she was injured.
With regard to state regulation of amusement parks, plaintiff stresses she does not claim defendant violated any applicable regulation in its operation of the Rue le Dodge ride
Plaintiff contends the extensive state regulations governing the design, construction, maintenance and operation of amusement park rides exist for the protection of riders’ safety, demonstrating an overriding policy concern inconsistent with application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine. As the Court of Appeal majority put the argument, the policy considerations behind the doctrine, avoiding the chilling effect of tort liability on vigorous participation, “are reversed in the amusement park setting. As the regulatory scheme bears out, the concern is not to excuse possible dangerous conditions in order to increase the thrill of a ride. Instead, rider safety is of paramount concern. Public policy, under the facts here, supports the imposition, of a duty
We do not agree that the existence of safety regulations governing amusement park rides exempts them from the primary assumption of risk doctrine. To be sure, the assurance of relative safety from grave injury, which state regulation helps to provide, is essential to amusement parks; few would voluntarily ride a roller coaster that regularly caused serious personal injuries. But perfect immunity from all risk of even minor injury is not generally the goal of the amusement park rider, and the state regulations do not guarantee such complete and perfect absence of risk. As Justice Cardozo, then Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, explained more than 80 years ago, the attractions of the amusement park “are not the pleasures of tranquillity.” (Murphy v. Steeplechase Amusement Co. (1929)
Plaintiff also argues the public policy of protecting passengers of a common carrier for reward, as expressed in Civil Code section 2100, precludes limiting defendant’s duty to riders on Rue le Dodge.
Riders on Rue le Dodge, in other words, are not passively carried or transported from one place to another. They actively engage in a game, trying to bump others or avoid being bumped themselves. The rationale for holding the operator of a roller coaster to the duties of a common carrier for reward—that riders, having delivered themselves into the control of the operator, are owed the highest degree of care for their safety—simply does not apply to bumper car riders’ safety from the risks inherent in bumping. “The rule that carriers of passengers are held to the highest degree of care is based on the recognition that ‘ “[t]o his diligence and fidelity are intrusted the lives and safety of large numbers of human beings.” ’ ” (Gomez, supra,
The undisputed facts in the summary judgment record demonstrate defendant was not a common carrier for reward in its operation of Rue le Dodge. The public policy supporting a higher duty of care for common carriers, therefore, does not apply here and does not preclude application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine.
Plaintiff argues that because defendant controlled and reaped economic benefits from the operation of the Rue le Dodge ride, public policy supports holding defendant to the ordinary duty of due care with regard to its conduct of the ride. We agree that in delineating legal duty a defendant’s relationship to the activity in which the plaintiff was injured is a proper consideration, but not that the relationship here makes imposition of an ordinary negligence duty appropriate.
Although the defendant in Knight was a coparticipant in the touch football game that led to the plaintiff’s injury, in articulating the rule of limited duty we referred as well to sponsors and operators of an activity. (See Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 316 [ski resort operator has no duty to remove moguls from run, but does have a duty to maintain towropes in safe condition], 318 [citing decisions on duties of sports facilities owners, equipment manufacturers, instructors and coaches].) The scope of the duty owed to participants in active recreation, we explained, depends not only on the nature of the activity but also on the role of the defendant whose conduct is at issue. (Id. at pp. 317-318.) Our later decisions establish that under the primary assumption of risk doctrine, operators, sponsors and instructors in recreational activities posing inherent risks of injury have no duty to eliminate those risks, but do owe participants the duty not to unreasonably increase the risks of injury beyond those inherent in the activity. (Avila v. Citrus Community College Dist., supra,
Plaintiff quotes the Court of Appeal majority’s reasoning that a greater duty should apply to proprietors of recreational activities because they are “uniquely positioned to eliminate or minimize certain risks, and are best financially capable of absorbing the relatively small cost of doing so.” As to the inherent risks of injury from recreation, we disagree. A rule imposing negligence duties on sponsors, organizers and operators of recreational activities would encompass not only commercial companies like defendant but also noncommercial organizations without extensive budgets or paid staff. Such groups might not easily afford insurance to cover injuries that are inherent risks of the activity; nor could they readily collect large fees from participants to cover that cost. The primary assumption of risk doctrine helps ensure that the threat of litigation and liability does not cause such recreational activities to be abandoned or fundamentally altered in an effort to eliminate or minimize inherent risks of injury.
Any attempt on our part to distinguish between angles of collision that pose inherent risks and those that pose extrinsic risks would ignore the nature of a bumper car ride, an activity that gives its mostly young participants the opportunity to inflict and evade low-speed collisions from a variety of angles.
Conclusion
The risk of injuries from bumping was inherent in the Rue le Dodge ride, and under our precedents defendant had no duty of ordinary care to prevent injuries from such an inherent risk of the activity. The absence of such a duty defeats plaintiff’s cause of action for negligence as a matter of law. Plaintiff’s “willful misconduct” cause of action, which (as described by the lower court and in plaintiff’s briefing) rests on a duty to minimize head-on collisions, fails
Disposition
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed.
Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., Baxter, J., Chin, J., Corrigan, J., and Liu, J., concurred.
Notes
See Ford v. Gouin (1992)
Outside the recreation context, we have explained the “firefighter’s rule” and “veterinarian’s rule,” precluding certain suits by workers in those occupations for the negligent creation of hazards inherent in their work, as applications of the primary assumption of risk doctrine. (See Priebe v. Nelson (2006)
We also do not disapprove the results in decisions previously cited as limiting application of primary assumption of risk to sports (see ante, at p. 1156). The doctrine may have been inapplicable in those cases for other reasons. (See, e.g., Shannon v. Rhodes, supra,
Although the cited discussion appears in a plurality opinion signed by only three justices, Justice Mosk separately expressed agreement with this part of the plurality opinion. (Knight, supra,
Only three regulations appear to specifically address bumper car rides, though other regulations are no doubt applicable to bumper cars as well as other rides. California Code of Regulations, title 8, section 3907, subdivision (b) provides: “Rides that are self-powered and that are operated by passengers shall have the driving mechanism so guarded and the guards so secured in place as to prevent passengers from gaining access to the mechanism. The ‘Dodge-Em’ type of ride shall have the overhead screening free from holes that will catch the power conducting device and allow it to hang-up or cause a whipping action of the device.” California Code of Regulations, title 8, section 3195.9 provides in subdivision (a) that “[l]ow speed vehicles designed for controlled collisions, such as bumper cars, do not require emergency stopping controls” and in subdivision (h)(6) that “[e]lectrically energized overhead screens used to power bumper car type rides shall be free of holes that are not part of the design.”
The cited regulation provides that the orders governing amusement park rides “establish minimum standards for design, maintenance, construction, alteration, operation, repair, inspections, assembly, disassembly, and use of amusement rides for the protection of persons using such rides.” (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 3900, italics added.)
“A carrier of persons for reward must use the utmost care and diligence for their safe carriage, must provide everything necessary for that purpose, and must exercise to that end a reasonable degree of skill.” (Civ. Code, § 2100.)
Although at oral argument plaintiffs counsel suggested she does not contend defendant was a common carrier, plaintiff’s answer brief states: “Dr. Nalwa maintains Cedar Fair was a common carrier when it operated Rue Le Dodge.”
Plaintiff cites Rosencrans v. Dover Images, Ltd. (2011)
Whether “willful misconduct” constitutes an independent cause of action or is merely an element of various claims and defenses was not decided by the Court of Appeal, identified as an issue in the petition for review, or briefed by the parties in this court. An amicus curiae brief argues forcefully against recognition of such a separate cause of action, but we decline to address the issue in this case.
Dissenting Opinion
In Knight v. Jewett (1992)
Eleven years later, in Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist. (2003)
Today the majority further expands Knight’s no-duty-for-sports rule, this time by bringing within the rule’s ambit “recreational activities” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1152) (here, a bumper car ride in an amusement park), saddling trial judges with the unenviable task of determining the risks of harm that are inherent in a particular recreational activity.
I
In 2005, plaintiff took her nine-year-old son on a bumper car ride at Great America, an amusement park in Santa Clara, California; she sat next to her son, who steered the car. The ride was “multidirectional” (cars could go in all directions). No written warnings prohibited “head-on” bumping, but riders who deliberately collided head on were told by the ride operator to stop. Plaintiff’s car was hit head on and from the back in close succession. As plaintiff put her hand on the car’s dashboard to brace herself, she fractured her wrist. She sued defendant Cedar Fair, L.P., the owner of the amusement park for, as relevant here, negligence.
At the time of the injury, defendant owned four other amusement parks. In those parks, the bumper car rides were unidirectional (cars could only go in one direction, around an island), allowing rear-end and side collisions but minimizing the likelihood of head-on collisions. Plaintiff here asserted that had the bumper car ride at Great America been unidirectional, the head-on collision that fractured her wrist would not have occurred.
Defendant successfully moved for summary judgment. The trial court ruled that plaintiff could not recover on her cause of action for negligence because
II
Until the 1993 plurality decision in Knight, California had in negligence cases followed the common law doctrine of assumption of risk, a defense to liability for injuries resulting from “a specific, known and appreciated risk” to which the plaintiff had voluntarily consented. (Knight, supra,
Common law assumption of the risk was an affirmative defense to be asserted and proved by the defendant at trial. Duty, by contrast, is a question of law to be determined by the trial court before trial, on demurrer or on a motion for summary judgment. The no-duty-for-sports rale reduces the traditional standard of care—measured by the conduct of a reasonable person in like or similar circumstances—by imposing on all those involved in sports activities (participants, coaches, and hosts of sporting events) only the duty to avoid increasing the danger beyond the risks that are “inherent” in the sport. Whether the plaintiff knowingly assumed the risk of injury no longer matters. As my dissent in Knight explained, the no-duty-for-sports rale “recast the analysis of implied assumption of risk from a subjective evaluation of what a particular plaintiff knew and appreciated about the encountered risk into a determination of the presence or absence of duty legally imposed on the defendant ...[,] thus transforming an affirmative defense into an element of the plaintiff’s negligence action.” (Knight, supra,
In an action seeking damages for a personal injury sustained while playing a sport, determining which risks are inherent in that sport is a difficult task.
The majority gives this reason for applying the no-duty-for-sports rule to recreational activities: “[Ajctive recreation, because it involves physical activity and is not essential to daily life, is particularly vulnerable to the chilling effects of potential tort liability for ordinary negligence.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1157.) The majority later asserts: “The primary assumption of risk doctrine helps ensure that the threat of litigation and liability does not cause such recreational activities to be abandoned or fundamentally altered in an effort to eliminate or minimize inherent risks of injury.” (Id. at p. 1162.) But the majority offers no evidence for that view. Pertinent here is this comment by a major treatise on tort law: “It may be that some courts are in the process of creating a freestanding limited-duty rule, divorced from its foundation in the parties’ expectations. The opinions suggest that the duty should be limited because of the danger of a flood of litigation, and because of a supposed policy of encouraging vigorous physical competition. Both these reasons, as distinct from the parties’ reasonable expectations, may be doubted.” (1 Dobbs et al., The Law of Torts (2d ed. 2011), § 240, p. 868, fns. omitted.)
A final point: Even if the common law assumption of risk doctrine were still in place in California (see pp. 1165-1166, ante), plaintiff here would not necessarily prevail in her action for personal injury. Under that doctrine, “the pertinent inquiry is not what risk is inherent in a particular sport [or recreational activity]; rather, it is what risk the plaintiff consciously and voluntarily assumed.” (Avila, supra,
Knight’s no-duty-for-sports rule has been strongly criticized in various legal journals. (See, e.g., Note, California Supreme Court Extends Assumption of Risk to Noncontact Sports—Shin v. Ahn,