UPDATE: Former landowner, BNSF, fails in its second attempt to escape a personal injury claim on summary judgment based on the fact that it no longer owned the land when Plaintiff Darcy Green sustained his ATV injury having run into BNSF’s concrete remnants of an old railroad bridge.
Original Post, April 17, 2010: In mid-June, 2007, Plaintiff Darcy Green ran his ATV into a concrete pillar of an old railroad bridge and was injured. BNSF had sold the property in early April, 2007.
Minnesota Litigator suspects that BNSF must have been pretty confident in its motion for summary judgment based on the proposition that, under Minnesota law, a former property owner cannot be held liable for an injury that occurred on the property after the sale of the property. And we’re not talking about some latent hazard concealed from the new property owner, of course. Darcy Green did not see the concrete pillar, apparently, and maybe BNSF was similarly blindsided by the ruling against its summary judgment motion?
United States District Judge Michael J. Davis (D. Minn.) denied the railroad’s motion for summary judgment, however, ruling: