Personal injury caused by fall from stand in sports hall

Hague Court of Appeal 22 August 2017

A woman and her husband attend a sold-out basketball game at a sports hall on 12 February 2012. After the match, the woman walks from her seat in the thirteenth row of the stands via the stairs down the stands. On a step near the seventh row (step 7), the woman falls, landing on the walkway and suffering a fractured left elbow. The woman holds the municipality liable as the owner of the sports hall. Due to the varying depth of the steps on the grandstand's stairs, the stairs were intrensically unsuitable for visitors to walk down without danger. The municipality disputes the defectiveness of the stand and further argues that the woman is (also) at fault for the fall due to insufficient inattention.

The subdistrict court rejected the woman's claim, after which the woman turned to the court of appeal. In the court's opinion, it is a fact of common knowledge that visitors to a well-visited public sports hall will not always observe the required attentiveness and caution when using grandstand steps. After all, their attention can easily be absorbed by, for example, the course or outcome of the matches. In the court's opinion, the municipality could and should have taken this reduced attentiveness of visitors into account. In addition, it is established that the step 7 in question is 22 centimetres deep, unlike steps 13 to 8, which are 43 centimetres deep. According to the court of appeal, according to rules of experience, it is to be expected that someone who regularly descends steps of the same depth down a staircase like this one will not always be aware (or need to be aware) that the subsequent steps are suddenly much less deep.

Because of this combination of factors, the grandstand stairs do not meet the requirements that may be expected (from a safety point of view) under the given circumstances, and the Court of Appeal considers there to be a considerable risk of falls, all the more so because there was no warning of this danger or a banister. Moreover, a fall down these stairs, given their height and the (angular) construction used, could lead to (very) serious consequences. In the court's opinion, this (considerable) danger could have been avoided without objection, for example by extending the deviating, short steps so that they would match the depth of the steps above them.

The municipality's reliance on own fault on the part of the woman is dismissed. It cannot reasonably be attributed to the woman that she was distracted before her fall by ladies who were handing out flyers standing along the grandstand steps, because this is by its nature an activity aimed at attracting the attention of visitors, so that it cannot reasonably be attributed to the woman that she did not have her (full) attention to the steps at the time. Incidentally, it was the municipality that allowed the distribution of flyers along the grandstand steps, which (according to common sense) is for the municipality's account and risk.

The court concluded that the municipality was fully liable for the damages suffered by the woman and granted the claimed advance payment of €4,500.00 in damages.

Tip: Property owners should bear in mind that users will not always exercise the required vigilance and caution.