In the case of Folcomer v. Craft, No. 2018-SU-0025278 (C.P. York. Co. Jan. 8, 2025 Menges, J.), the court granted a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by certain Defendants in a tragic shooting accident matter.
According to the Opinion, one of the Defendants in this case lived on the moving Defendant’s property. On the day of the incident, certain Co-Defendants were target shooting on the property.
Nearby, the Plaintiff and the Plaintiff’s decedent left their home and began a drive.
A bullet from the shooting target area of the nearby home traveled through the target, into the nearby woods, ricochet off a roadway and struck the decedent who was a passenger in the Plaintiff’s vehicle.
The Defendants who filed the summary judgment motion in this case were the owners of the property on which the target shooting was taking place.
In this decision, the court ruled that no duty exists to control the acts of third parties unless a “special relationship exists with either the actor the victim.”
In this decision, the court also addressed the Nanty-Glo rule and found that this rule did not bar summary judgment in this case as the testimony relied upon by the moving the Defendant was from adversarial Co-Defendants.
The court also referred to §318 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts and found that the moving Defendant landowners had no duty to control the conduct of the shooting Defendants as there was no evidence that the moving Defendants were aware of any continuous or dangerous use of the land that would have allowed them an opportunity to intervene. In this case, it appeared that the act of target shooting on the property was not an ordinary event.
In the end, the court granted the Motion for Summary Judgment filed by the moving Defendants who were the owners of the land in question.
Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.
I send thanks to Attorney Stephen M. Hickey of the York, PA law firm of Griffith, Lerman, Lutz & Scheib for bringing this case to my attention.