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Gifford v. Grimes12/3/2002
UNPUBLISHED
Plaintiff Jessica Gifford appeals as of right the trial court's order granting summary disposition pursuant to MCR 2.116(C)(7) to defendants, employees of the Ypsilanti School District, in this personal injury action. We affirm.
I. Basic Facts And Procedural History
The facts of this case are largely undisputed; the legal conclusions to be drawn from those facts are at the heart of this case. In January 1994, twelve-year-old Gifford was a student in the seventh grade at East Middle School in the Ypsilanti School District. On January 26, Gifford attended the first volleyball team practice session. The team used a portable net for their practices. The net was affixed to two large poles, approximately eight feet tall, and each pole was inserted in a heavy round base that had two wheels attached. Each pole/base assembly weighed somewhere between eighty and one hundred pounds, and, evidently, most of that weight was in the base. To move the poles on the respective bases, a person would tip the pole and roll it on the attached wheels.
On this day, the girls' volleyball team was slated to practice in the cafeteria. Volunteer coach Dori Boroner told Gifford and her friend, Aliki Bovoaletis, to move the poles from the gymnasium to the cafeteria. Boroner did not inspect the poles and bases. Nor did she instruct the girls on how to move the equipment or supervise the girls' efforts. Previously, Gifford had seen girls in the eighth grade set-up the poles and net during team tryouts. Bovoaletis had also been involved in volleyball for some time. Gifford and Bovoaletis grabbed the poles and started dragging them toward the gymnasium doors. As Bovoaletis attempted to open the gymnasium doors, the pole she was holding detached from the base and the base landed on Gifford's left foot.
The injury the base inflicted on Gifford was serious, painful, and debilitating, The base crushed Gifford's largest toe on her left foot, immediately turning it black in color. The base crushed the bones in the adjacent toe on her left foot. Her foot was swollen and bloody. Gifford, in a state of shock, hopped to the coach's office in the girl's locker room screaming "bloody murder." Boroner and principal D.E. Goodall attended to Gifford and called her father. Gifford's father took her to a doctor's office, but the doctor immediately sent her to the hospital, where she stayed overnight. She missed two to three weeks of school following the accident because of the pain, swelling, and additional medical treatment she needed. She was forced to use crutches to move around her home and a wheelchair in public. Though physicians initially placed a cast on her left leg, they had to amputate her largest toe in March 1994. Her other toe never fully healed. As she described it, "If you start from my foot and work up on that second toe, it's fine up to the first joint, and once it comes to that joint the bone is pretty much crumbled and not there. It's deformed and floppy and there's no toenail on it." Though Gifford had additional surgery in 1995, she continues to have pain, walk with a limp, and use a shoe insert to protect her remaining toes.
Following the accident, the Ypsilanti School District did not undertake a formal investigation. Rather, in December 1994, apparently in response to inquiries from the Gifford family, defendant Michael McIntosh, the athletic director, produced a single page report referring to the "Volleyball Accident," which stated:
An inquiry was made by the staff at East Middle School as to the manufacturer, brand name, or any reference about the volleyball standard that was involved in the accident of January 26, 1994. The result
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