Woman Tries To Sue Over Injury At Bucks Co. Park, State Says No

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — A state judge upheld a Bucks County court ruling, affirming that a woman who says she injured herself on the slide at a Bristol Township park did not have grounds to sue.

Betty Wright visited the local Carol Counts Park on October 22, 2o15, when she went down a tube slide in the park with her two-year-old goddaughter. At the bottom of the slide, her foot sank into a depression in the wood chip covered surface and she twisted her ankle, causing a fracture.

According to the lawsuit, Wright needed several operations to mend the fracture to her tibia and fibula in 2015 and 2016.

In January of 2018, she filed a complaint alleging that the township possessed and controlled the park, and so knew or should have known that depressions in the ground at the playground pose a serious risk of harm. She said that the Township failed to repair or warn of the dangerous condition of its property, resulting in her injuries.

The Township filed a motion for summary judgment. On July 31, 2020, the trial court dismissed Wright's claims of liability under the Recreational Use of Land and Water Act, or RULWA.

This decision came after Bucks County Judge Jeffrey L. Finley found that the park qualified as "land" under RULWA, rather than real property, and so was immune to Wright's claims.

Wright appealed the ruling, saying that the court erred, misapplied the law, or acted in an unreasonable manner. She asserted that Carol Counts Park did not constitute “land” under RULWA, and said that Pennsylvania's Supreme and appellate courts previously assessed liability under the act based on whether the land was improved or had improvements on it.

However, this appeal was unsuccessful.

The Commonwealth Court found that, based on five factors including remoteness of the land and exclusively recreational use, the park qualified as an ancillary structure attached to open space land and was immune to Wright's lawsuit.

"Because the trial court considered the instant case in light of its specific factual context and our state’s full body of RULWA-related case law, the trial court did not commit an error of law or abuse its discretion in granting the Township’s motion for summary judgment," Judge J. Andrew Compton wrote in his opinion filed on Friday.

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