New Jersey Woman May Lose Premises Injury Award In Mercer Cemetery Case
A New Jersey woman, who fell while trying to scale the wall of a Mercer cemetery and successfully sued the city of Trenton, may end up not keeping her $1.6 million premises injury award after all.
In 2001, Suzanne Ogborne was strolling through the Mercer cemetery, when an employee locked the gates at 4.30 pm – the cemetery's closing hours - leaving Ogborne inside. After trying in vain to find another open route out of the cemetery, Ogborne finally scaled the wall, and jumped over and down to the other side. The fall left her with a broken tibia. She had to undergo surgery, and was forced to remain away from work for three months. She also suffered a pulmonary embolism, a disorder characterized by blockage of a lung artery and caused by a blood clot traveling from the leg, as a result of her injuries and the treatment. The condition can lead to a loss of oxygen in the blood, and carries the risk of organ damage because of this loss of oxygen.
Ogborne sued the city of Trenton, claiming that her injuries were the result of negligence because the guard who locked the gates should have checked to make sure that nobody was in, before he shut the gates. Ogborne won the suit, and was awarded $1.6 million. Now, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered a retrial in the matter, saying that the case should have been held to a "palpably unreasonable" standard of liability, and not the "ordinary negligence" standard under which she had been awarded $1.6 million. The justices ruled that the dangerous condition had been brought about by a combination of two factors - Ogborne's presence in the park, and the guard's locking of the gates. The employee's act of locking the gates in itself did not constitute a dangerous condition. The court also ruled that a new jury should consider Ogborne's negligence comparative to the negligence of the city in the incident.
Premises Injury Lawyer
It's not always easy to pursue claims against government bodies because of governmental immunity. Private citizens are often faced with a solid block of wall when they try to come up against a government entity. Litigating claims when you have been injured on another's property, private or government, involves hiring an experienced Monmouth and Bergen County premises injury attorney to file a claim for injuries sustained. If you have been injured on another's property – through a slip and fall accident, on an elevator or stairways etc. – contact a Monmouth and Bergen County premises injury lawyer at my firm for a free evaluation of your case.
