A bronze statue of Lady Justice holding scales is displayed indoors.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A blind college student who thought he was climbing over a bench but instead fell over a guardrail can’t sue over the incident, the Alaska Supreme Court recently held.
On May 1, it dismissed Michael Carey-Thomann’s lawsuit against the University of Alaska Fairbanks, deciding the college had no duty to protect him from risks created by his own conduct.
“First, we note that UAF had no reason to foresee that any student – or Carey-Thomann in particular – would be likely to climb over a functional guardrail without first finding out what it was,” Justice Jennifer Henderson wrote.
“If UAF had a duty to warn Carey-Thomann about the existence of a functional, ordinary guardrail, such a duty might extend to anything on campus that could conceivably cause any student’s injury if they failed to use due care.”
Carey-Thomann, blind since he was a child, lived on the UAF campus and would follow paths to get lost and sometimes climb over metal benches. He complained that a UAF representative never showed him places to avoid during a tour.
At the student union building, the rep did not inform Carey-Thomann that the Wood Center had a second-story balcony surrounded by a guardrail. In March 2020, he was somewhat lost visiting the Wood Center for dinner but, with help from another student, made it to the lower floor.
The next day, Carey-Thomann attempted to retrace his steps but doors were locked. When his cane hit the guardrail, he thought it was a bench or bike rack. Video shows he did not attempt to use his cane to see if there was ground on the other side.
He fell 10 feet onto his back and sued UAF for negligence, alleging it failed to maintain a safe environment. His effort failed in the trial court, and the Supreme Court said imposing this duty on UAF would place a substantial burden on it and the “broader community.”
It found the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Alaska Human Rights Act weren’t at issue in this case – “neither mandates specific conduct relating to prevention of physical injury,” Henderson wrote.
The court referred to an earlier case in which a 12-year-old sledded down a city-owned road and was struck by a car. It was determined the City of Yakutat, despite knowing children would sled on the road, owed no duty to protect them from injury.
“Like the child’s collision with the car, Carey-Thomann’s fall from the balcony was caused not by an ‘inherently dangerous property condition,’ but by Carey-Thomann’s volitional conduct when he climbed over the guardrail,” Henderson wrote.
And there was no special duty created when UAF allowed him to remain on campus during the COVID pandemic, the court added.
“Whatever duty UAF might have assumed to Carey-Thomann would not extend to protecting him from an obvious danger that was fundamentally created by Carey-Thomann’s own actions,” Henderson said.
