## Facts

- Francis J. Klen, Jr., age 14, visited neighbors who had an above-ground swimming pool with a trampoline placed next to it.
- Klen watched others bounce on the trampoline and dive into the pool, then followed their directions.
- After bouncing several times, Klen dove headfirst into the pool, struck his head on the bottom, and suffered a spinal cord injury resulting in quadriplegia.
- Klen had years of diving instruction and generally understood that diving into shallow water can be dangerous.
- Klen sued the pool manufacturer (Asahi), the pool liner manufacturer (Doughboy), and the trampoline manufacturer/seller (Andy’s Sales) on strict products-liability theories focused on failure to warn.

## Issues

1. In a strict-liability failure-to-warn claim, whether the “open and obvious” nature of the danger of diving into an above-ground pool must be assessed objectively by reference to a reasonable person within the expected class of users (including teenagers), and whether that question could be resolved on summary judgment.
2. Whether the pool liner and trampoline were merely background “conditions,” or whether a jury could find either product a proximate cause of the injury, making summary judgment improper.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the denial of summary judgment for Asahi, holding that whether the danger was open and obvious to a reasonable 14-year-old was a fact question for the jury.
- The appellate court reversed summary judgment for Doughboy and remanded, holding that a jury could reasonably find the liner’s features and warnings (or lack of warnings) to be a proximate cause.
- The appellate court affirmed summary judgment for Andy’s Sales, holding the trampoline was, on these facts, a mere condition rather than a proximate cause as a matter of law.

## Legal Principles

- In strict-liability failure-to-warn cases, the “open and obvious” inquiry is objective but must be evaluated from the standpoint of a reasonable person within the foreseeable class of product users.
- When reasonable factfinders could differ on whether a danger is open and obvious to the relevant user class, summary judgment on duty-to-warn grounds is improper.
- Proximate cause may be decided as a matter of law only when the evidence permits a single reasonable inference; otherwise, causation is for the jury.
- A product may be deemed a nonactionable “condition” rather than a proximate cause when its connection to the injury is too attenuated to support liability on the record presented.

## Conclusion

The court held that the open-and-obvious doctrine in failure-to-warn claims must be applied objectively to the expected user class, leaving a jury to decide whether an above-ground pool posed an open-and-obvious risk of catastrophic injury to a reasonable 14-year-old; it also distinguished proximate cause from mere conditions by reinstating the claim against the pool liner maker while upholding judgment for the trampoline seller.


Klen v. Asahi Pool, Inc., 268 Ill. App. 3d 1031, 643 N.E.2d 1360 (Ill. App. Ct. 1994)