CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the city over a woman’s 2016 bicycle injury on the Clarksville Greenway.
On Nov. 30, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Ross H. Hicks dismissed the case, according to a city news release late Wednesday morning.
According to the lawsuit, Michael and Laurie Marquis, represented by Clarksville attorney Pete Olson, were riding bicycles on Jan. 6, 2016, on the Greenway between the Pollard Road and Mary’s Oak Drive access points, the release said.
Laurie Marquis encountered an incline and “voluntarily got off her bicycle to push” at which point she “lost control and fell,” the plaintiffs claimed in their complaint, filed in January 2017. Marquis testified that she rolled down a ravine, causing injury to her left ankle and “other harms and losses.”
The plaintiffs claimed that the City left elevated portions of the Greenway without guardrails, which “created dangerously defective conditions.”
In his ruling, Hicks characterized the suit as a “premises liability action” where the injuries would have to be caused by “a defect, unsafe or dangerous condition of any street, alley, sidewalk or highway, owned and controlled by the defendant.”
The judge found that under the Tennessee Recreational Use statute, the city is not under an obligation to keep the Greenway safe for bicycling.
“The City owed no duty of care to keep the greenway safe for entry or use by plaintiffs for their recreational activity of biking, and thus the recreational use statute completely insulates the city from plaintiffs’ claims,” Hicks said in the ruling.
Also, the court found that the placement fencing on parts of the greenway is “a discretionary function” and is not required.
Olson was not available for comment on Wednesday, according to his office.
In the release, City Attorney Lance Baker called the ruling “great legal news for the City.” He credited the work of staff attorneys in his office, Jeff Goodson and Neil Stauffer.