A broken ankle and a loss of sex are not the responsibility of the managers and operators of a famed glass slide almost 1,000 feet above downtown Los Angeles on the side of the 72-story U.S. Bank building, according to recently filed legal papers.
The filing rejected a lawsuit filed by a woman who suffered the broken ankle, saying she assumed the risk of injury and she wasn’t sufficiently careful. Her husband is a co-plaintiff in the action, claiming a “loss of consortium.” According to Law.com, that’s the “inability of one’s spouse to have normal marital relations, which is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.”
Prior to getting on the Skyslide that takes people from the 70th to 69th floor in a 1 1/4 inch glass enclosed slide, Gayle Yashar also released OUE Skyspace LLC and Legends Hospitality LLC from any liability for injury and did not exercise the level of care on her own behalf that would have prevented her from getting hurt, according to the defense attorneys’ court papers.
Yashar, 57, alleges negligence in a lawsuit filed July 13 in Los Angeles Superior Court. Her husband, Morty Yashar, is a co-plaintiff, claiming loss of consortium. The Yashars, of Woodmere, N.Y., are seeking unspecified damages.
According to the complaint, Gayle Yashar was injured July 3, eight days after the slide opened on the side of the tallest building on the West Coast. The suit alleges the owners failed to warn riders of the risks involved in coming down the Skyslide, and that it was designed in a way that those who use it cannot slow down enough before reaching the end.
The complaint also alleges that stacked mats at the end of the slide runout area “created a gap that trapped the covered feet of riders. This increased the risk of serious injury for an ankle fracture which was far beyond the risk assumed by the uninformed and unsuspecting riders.”
The defense lawyers’ court papers filed Thursday state their clients did not have control of the portion of the premises where Gayle Yashar was injured. OUE and Legends also were unaware of any dangerous condition beforehand to correct the problem within enough time to prevent the accident, according to the defense attorneys’ court papers.
The OUE/Legends lawyers maintain in their court papers that the property’s condition was one which “creates a minor, trivial or insignificant risk of injury.”
The defense lawyers further argue that their clients did not know about any “peculiar susceptibility” of the plaintiffs to emotional distress and that the typical person “would have been able to adequately cope” with what happened.
–City News Service