In a case with echoes of Palsgraf, a Long Island judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed by an 11-year-old girl and her grandmother, who were both injured when a man crashed into them while chasing a T-shirt launched into a crowd at Jones Beach as part of a radio-station promotion, presents triable issues of fact.
"The permission granted to the defendant radio station to stage this event impliedly, if not expressly, obligated it to ensure that reasonable, common sense safeguards were used," Acting Supreme Court Justice Lawrence J. Brennan of Nassau County, N.Y., held in Curran v. CXR Holding, 011118/02. "These included providing security and warnings, and not allowing these shirts to be randomly thrown or slingshoted into the air without regard for the safety of bystanders, beachgoers or others using the beach for normal purposes."
Plaintiff Kristen Curran was attending an Independence Day fireworks show with her mother, grandmother and six of her siblings. They were sitting on a blanket when rock-station WBAB-FM began launching T-shirts into the audience as part of a pre-fireworks promotion. Kristen claims the station used a cannon-type device; the station claims the shirts were thrown.
Either way, the plaintiffs alleged "that within a few minutes, a large, rowdy male beachgoer descended upon the blanket in an attempt to grab a 'flying' t-shirt, and, in so doing, fell on them and caused [them] to sustain serious personal injuries," according to the decision.