Landlords for an apartment complex just outside of Portland, Oregon, are being sued after a child fell from a third-floor window earlier this year. Maci Pomykala was seven years old when she “sat on the interior windowsill in her third-story bedroom.” According to the lawsuit, the window was “capable of opening sufficiently to permit a person to fall through the opening.” Maci Pomykala fell backward through the screen to the ground below, sustaining “life-threatening injuries.”
Maci’s mother, Lorrain Pomykala, filed a lawsuit last month against Rivergreens Associates Limited Partnership and Rivergreens Associates II Limited Partnership, which are identified as the owners of the Rivergreens Apartments where the Pomykalas lived. The property manager, CSM Corp., a corporation of Minnesota, is also named as a defendant in the suit. Lorrain Pomykala, through her attorneys, claim that, “[as] professional landlords, defendants knew or had reason to know of the prevailing residential safety standards, including the recognized risk of falls from upper-story windows and the availability of window opening control devices and other fall-prevention measures.”
Further, Pomykala’s attorneys argue that:
- the defendants “knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care, had reason to know that young children commonly sit, climb, lean, and play near windows,”
- that the upper-story windows were able to open enough to allow a person to fall through them, and
- that contemporary Oregon residential safety standards recognize this risk and require fall-prevention measures for certain upper-story windows.
Plaintiff and her attorney allege that the defendants knew—or should have known—that window opening control devices (WOCD) are available and inexpensive, and that the installation thereof “could substantially reduce or eliminate the risk that a child would fall from an upper-story window.” By not installing or even offering any sort of WOCD to tenants and not restricting how much the windows in the apartment complex can open, Pomykala alleges that the defendants “[failed] to protect child occupants from the known and foreseeable risk of catastrophic injury or death resulting from falls from windows without safeguards in upper-story apartments.”
While this case is far from the first that finds a parent suing the owners and operators of the property where their children were injured in a fall from a window, Pomykala isn’t naming the window manufacturers and window installers as defendants.
Maci’s injuries were described in the complaint as “severe” and “life-threatening.” The list includes facial fractures, a traumatic brain injury and related subarachnoid hemorrhage, balance issues, neck pain and an arm broken in at least two places. Taking into account the immediate injuries, as well what are cited as potential future medical problems, not limited to seizures, additional surgeries, potential permanent disability/deformity, and possible PTSD, Lorraine Pomykala has requested a jury trial and is asking for $3,000,000 in noneconomic damages and $95,000 in economic damages.