## Facts

- TGI Friday’s, Inc. rented a subdivision recreational area with a large in-ground swimming pool for a private employee party attended by about 200 trainees.
- Alcohol was provided, and trainees were told they could “get crazy” and could throw training supervisors into the pool.
- Before the incident, other supervisors had been pushed or thrown into the pool.
- As Luis Menendez was leaving, trainees seized him, carried him to the pool, and threw him headfirst into the shallow end.
- Menendez suffered catastrophic spinal injuries resulting in quadriplegia.
- Menendez and family sued the pool designer/builder (Paddock) and development-related entities (Continental and an individual) on strict products liability and negligence theories, alleging defective pool design and construction contributed to the injury.

## Issues

1. Whether a custom-designed, in-ground swimming pool incorporated into a residential common area is a “product” subject to strict products liability.
2. Whether the pool designer/builder and development entities owed a negligence duty that included preventing injury from a person being forcibly thrown headfirst into the pool’s shallow end at an alcohol-fueled event.
3. Whether the conduct of third parties in throwing Menendez into the pool constituted a superseding cause defeating proximate causation.

## Decision

- The court affirmed dismissal of the strict products liability claims against Paddock and the development entities.
- The court held the pool was an improvement to real property rather than a “product,” so strict products liability did not apply.
- The court affirmed summary judgment for defendants on negligence.
- The court concluded the injury resulted from intervening third-party conduct that was not reasonably foreseeable to the pool designer/builder or developers and that broke the chain of proximate causation.

## Legal Principles

- Strict products liability applies to “products,” not to custom-built, fixed improvements to real property integrated into a construction project.
- A custom-designed, permanently installed in-ground swimming pool is treated as an improvement to realty rather than a product for strict-liability purposes.
- Negligence liability is limited by the scope of duty and proximate cause; extraordinary, intervening third-party conduct may constitute a superseding cause.
- Foreseeability is evaluated in relation to the specific mechanism of injury; a designer/builder is not liable where the harm arises from atypical, independent human actions outside the risk the design reasonably must address.

## Conclusion

The court held that a custom in-ground pool constructed as part of a residential common-area facility is not a product for strict-liability purposes and that the defendants were not negligent because the nonconsensual, headfirst throwing of Menendez into shallow water was an unforeseeable intervening act that cut off liability.


Menendez v. Paddock Pool Constr. Co., 836 P.2d 968 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1991)