Jordan Horrocks

U0536827
PRT 3520

Liability & Risk Management

Final Project

Bountiful City Parks Department

As a parks employee, the number one job, above all else, is safety.
Making sure everyone in the parks is safe while making sure that the city
itself is protected against liability is priority. I am currently an employee of
the Bountiful City Parks Department, have been for many years, and plan on
being there for many years more. This course in liability and risk
management will be very crucial throughout my career.
There are many ways that people may become injured in a park or in
the parks department, whether it be psychological, financial, physical, or
political. The most common types of litigation I will have to encounter will
likely be cases of negligence. These may include basically three causes of
negligence; a person participating in park activities becoming injured, an
injury is caused by an employee on another person, or a person injuring
themselves while on the job. Knowing how to protect myself as well as the
city is essential.
Presently I am a parks maintenance supervisor for the Bountiful City
Parks Department. I deal with the daily maintenance of various parks and
other city owned properties. I manage four employees, and together using
many types of power tools, trucks, different vehicles, and other various
equipment we keep the facilities clean, maintained, and safe. I keep strict
records when possible liabilities and risks are found, and record when and
how they are fixed.
Even with proper training employees may sometimes become injured
on the job. Someone could fall off a ladder, slip and fall, get crushed under

heavy equipment, crash a vehicle, or become critically injured from

dangerous power tools. Also, parkgoers may become injured inside parks or
on park equipment where the standard of care is not met; and negligence
occurs whether it be slight, ordinary, or gross including willful or wanton.
Accidents could occur from tripping hazards, allowing dangerous conduct or
behavior to occur, or other hazards the department fails to keep maintained.
The other risk is a direct accident caused by an employee on another person.
This could be something such as an employee driving recklessly and
crashing into someone, sexual harassment, or violation of the first
amendment or other constitutional rights.
Employees becoming injured on the job may be quite frequent and
possibly very severe. Although they are likely frequent, most tend to me less
severe. Such is the case with James Ullman versus the City of Tampa Parks
Department. In this case the City of Tampa was appealing a ruling giving
Ullman disability and medical benefits. Ullman had first been working on
scraping a non-skid surface floor covering for the better part of 2 days. After
doing this he claimed he was instructed to undertake a job that would
include digging and realigning meter boxes in Tampa City Park. He later
notified his advisor who stated that it did not even appear that any digging
had been done. He received two medical evaluations, one from an unbiased
independent medical examiner. Both stated that Mr. Ullman did not show any
signs of any industrial related work injury, and the condition appeared to be

preexisting. Along with the Drs. exams, Mr. Ullmans testimony was very
inconsistent and the court ruled in favor of the city of Tampa.
Another way a person may become injured is when a duty to protect a
park attendee from injury is breached and harm befalls that person. This may
be fairly frequent, with most injuries being less severe, going unknown not
calling for litigation, except for the larger more severe occurrences. There is
an example of such negligence cases in the trial court case of Titus Preston
versus Pierce County. On this occasion Titus became injured when his foot
slipped into some uncovered, exposed, moving parts at the center of a parks
manual merry-go-round. He was appealing the courts initial ruling granting
immunity in the Washington recreation land use immunity act which protects
landowners as long as the injury was not intentional, there was no fee, and
there were no dangers that did not have signs warning of the conditions. The
plaintiff argued that it was an attractive nuisance; however, the boys mother
testified that she allowed her boy to play on the toy knowing that the cover
to the moving parts was missing and that the parts were clearly visible. The
boy also testified as to playing on the toy several times previously and could
not recall whether there was any signs stating to keep off, however, both
maintenance workers testified as to the words keep off being labeled on the
toy. This helped prove that although there were known dangerous artificial
latent conditions, there were warning signs that had been conspicuously
posted.

While injuries caused by employees may not be as frequent as either

park negligence or workplace injuries, the severity may still remain very
high. This is exemplified in the case of Yvonne Haddock versus City of New
York. In this case a 9 year old child was raped by a New York City parks
department employee. The department was fully aware of his history of
violent crime and that he was a former felon working on rehabilitation. When
applying for his position the employee lied about his previous criminal past.
After the background check went through the department retained him as an
employee leaving him unsupervised in his duties even with his history of
violent crime. It was stated that although it was a worthy cause, trying to
help rehabilitate ex-convicts and assisting them in reintegrating into society
that cannot excuse an employer from complying with its guidelines that
require informed discretion when employing former inmates which the jury judged
led to a foreseeable risk of harm to the plaintiff and led to her injuries.
In the first case of the man and his injured back you would likely just want to
transfer that risk rather than having to deal with that. That would likely be done by
having workers compensation in line. Also for other injuries you would want to try to
reduce such occurrences by properly training employees and making sure all
equipment is safe and running correctly. For the next case it is similar. You would
want to have insurance for when injuries such as that occur, and also try to reduce
by always monitoring the safety of playground equipment. However, today, in the
case of merry-go-rounds, many people are looking to close, or avoid in these
situations, because the pieces of playground equipment have led to many injuries
and have been shown to be unsafe. So, many municipalities are removing these

toys from their playgrounds. In the last case with the employment of the violent
criminal you may try to reduce by have the person always be supervised or try to
transfer the risk, but the safest bet would just be to avoid or close the risk, by either
not hiring former inmates all together or not placing ones with certain criminal pasts
in certain work positions that might prove to be dangerous.