May 29, 2007

While playing basketball at a schoolyard, the ninth-grade plaintiff was hurt when he says he fell on a hole in the court's surface. Plaintiff testified that he had played basketball there before and that he had been playing for about forty minutes when the accident occurred. It is black-letter law that a player consents to those risks which are inherent to the sport and which flow from playing it. That consent runs to the construction of the playing surface and any open and obvious condition on it, according to the Second Department, which dismissed the suit, in Casey v. Garden City Park-New Hyde Park School Dist., which was decided on May 22, 2007.