FARGO – A Fargo woman is suing the city's Park District, claiming she suffered a collapsed lung and broken collarbone in a Rollerblading mishap at a northside park.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Cass County District Court, alleges that Karisa Frith was Rollerblading in Airport Park in July 2012 when her Rollerblade caught in some soft patching material on the sidewalk.
The crash was violent enough to require screws, a steel plate and wires to fix two breaks in Frith's collarbone.
The crash also left her with broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and scrapes and bruises, even though she was wearing a helmet, kneepads and elbow and wrist guards, the lawsuit says.
Ron Fischer, the Park District's attorney, said parks officials plan to file a motion to dismiss the case based on a North Dakota statute that gives landowners and government entities recreational immunity.
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The statute is designed to encourage people to develop land for free use for recreation and protect them from liability when people get hurt playing on it, he said.
A prior lawsuit Frith filed against the Park District in 2013 was dismissed without prejudice by Cass County Judge Wickham Corwin.
Frith's lawsuit specifies she wasn't Rollerblading for purely recreational purposes, but instead was engaging in mental health therapy for her depression, and obsessive compulsive and eating disorders.
Fischer said he believes that won't affect the application of the statue.
"If you could circumvent recreational immunity by making claims like that, it would pretty much swallow up that rule," he said.
Frith's lawsuit says the Park District was negligent in not warning about the dangerous path conditions, and seeks more than $50,000 in damages.
Her first court hearing has not yet been set.
