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Premises Liability: Court grants the defendant’s motion for summary judgment on recklessness in premises liability case

The plaintiff was a friend of the defendant’s son, who at the time was playing with the defendant’s son in the defendant’s backyard. The boys were jumping off of a fully constructed plastic playset as well as a partially constructed wooden playset that the defendants began to assemble the previous weekend. There was no evidence that either defendant knew that the plaintiff was jumping off the partially constructed wooden playset as the father was not home and the mother was inside tending to a newborn baby. The defendant did warn the children, including the plaintiff, to stay off the partially built playset until it was finished. The plaintiff sustained injuries while jumping off the partially constructed playset and filed suit against the defendants. On the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, the court grants the motion as to the recklessness count, relying the Supreme Court’s definition of recklessness which focuses on state of mind. “Recklessness requires a conscious choice of a course of action either with knowledge of the serious danger to other involved in it or with knowledge of facts which would disclose this danger to any reasonable man…” The court finds that the plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence that either defendant had a reckless state of mind or that they engaged in conduct that could imply a design to injure the plaintiff. The plaintiff argued that both defendants knew the boys were jumping on things and that the father read the wooden playset manual which specified to keep children off until completely assembled, but the court does not find that these facts were sufficient to raise a genuine issue of material fact for a reckless state of mind. The court therefore grants summary judgment as to the recklessness counts. Kenyon v. Vongher, No. NNH-CV21-6111444S, 2023 WL 2385983 (Conn. Super. Ct. Mar. 1, 2023).