“…the attorney for the hotel owner, said the pool area complied with state law and asked the jury to consider 
the responsibility borne by Robert Smith and his daughter when they entered the pool…”
A jury in Hackensack on Thursday determined that a hotel owner was not responsible for a near-drowning that left a Georgia man brain-injured after he tried to rescue his daughter from the hotel’s swimming pool.
The family of Robert A. Smith sued Ratan R. Park, LLC., owner of the Ramada Inn in Rochelle Park, for damages after Smith was overcome by water on July 4, 2009, when he tried to rescue his 11-year-old daughter, Brianna, after she drifted into the pool’s deep end.
Smith remains in a nursing home with permanent brain injuries that an attorney for Smith’s family said were the direct result of negligence by the hotel’s owner.
In the trial before Superior Court Judge Charles Powers, Attorney Greg Haddad had argued that the pool’s depth markings were inaccurate, its bottom was steeper than it should have been and the hotel owner failed to provide a “life line†separating the pool’s deep and shallow ends, presenting a “perfect storm†for guests who couldn’t swim.
Neither Smith nor his daughter could swim, and O’Hara in closing arguments on Wednesday in state Superior Court told the jury in the civil case that “both had a duty to exercise reasonable care; they had an obligation to make reasonable observations.â€
For more:Â http://www.northjersey.com/news/Jury_absolves_Rochelle_Park_hotel_of_responsibility_in_near-drowning_in_pool.html
