Childs v. City University of New York

On 12/28/1991, a crowd crush at a charity celebrity basketball game in CCNY's Nat Holman Gymnasium — organized and promoted by Sean Combs and Dwight 'Heavy D' Myers — killed 9 people and injured 29. Roughly 5,000 people attempted to enter a gym rated for 2,730; a crowd surge broke a glass door, pushed into a stairwell, and crushed people against inward-opening doors held shut for up to 15 minutes. The court rejected CUNY's sovereign-immunity defense, holding that operating campus facilities for an event like this was a proprietary (not governmental) function, so CUNY was held to ordinary landlord tort standards -- a duty to act as a reasonable person in maintaining the property safely and to adequately supervise activities that could endanger others. On foreseeability, Judge Benza wrote: "It does not take an Einstein to know that young people...who have paid as much as $20 a ticket, would not be very happy and easy to control if they were unable to gain admission." CUNY was found to have breached its duty by approving an incomplete event application without requiring attendance projections, failing to hold required departmental coordination meetings, not reassessing security once it learned of the celebrity draw and high ticket sales, effectively abandoning security responsibility to Combs' own security forces, and continuing ticket sales despite knowing the event was oversold. Combs' security was found independently negligent for closing the gymnasium door while the crowd was dangerously compressed in the stairwell, creating what the court called a "dike" effect that "squeezed out life's breath from young bodies." The court apportioned CUNY 50% liable and Combs/Myers (not parties to this Court of Claims action, but assigned liability under CPLR Article 16) the remaining 50%, with claimants found to bear no comparative negligence; the matter was remitted for a trial on damages only.