Health Kick: Inadvertent Contact Between Yoga Participants is a Foreseeable Risk

“[W]hen people engage in a recreational activity, they have voluntarily subjected themselves to certain risks inherent in that activity.” Ruppel, unpub op at 4. “As a result, coparticipants in a recreational activity owe each other a duty not to act recklessly.” Id.

But this “recklessness standard of care” extends “only to injuries that arise from risks inherent to the activity.” Id. “Therefore, to determine the standard of care applicable when an injury arises involving coparticipants in a recreational activity, a court must consider whether the injuries arose from risks inherent in that recreational activity.” Id.

When the Plaintiff in Ruppel, a lawsuit defended by Secrest Wardle in the trial court and on appeal, was inadvertently kicked in the head by a co-participant during a yoga class, her “injury and the mechanism by which it occurred were reasonably foreseeable and an inherent risk of participating in a yoga class.” Ruppel, unpub op at 6. Therefore, “the applicable standard of care is reckless misconduct.” Id.

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