Distraught souls who leap to their deaths from the George Washington Bridge have no one to blame but themselves, a city judge has ruled in swatting down a suit filed by the families of two suicide jumpers.
“A dangerous condition cannot be created simply because someone makes it dangerous for himself,” wrote Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arlene Bluth in throwing out a pair of suits filed against the Port Authority by the jumpers’ families, seeking a cumulative $140 million.
“Most property owners have no idea about the mental state of the people who traverse their properties,” the judge said. “They cannot be held liable because someone makes the tragic decision to take his own life.”
The grieving relatives of promising jazz musician Lael Feldman and prominent Freedom Tower architect Andrew Donaldson claimed that the GWB was a “suicide magnet” and that the Port Authority, which oversees it, didn’t do enough to stop suicides.
Feldman, 24, and Donaldson, 49, were two of five people to end their lives by jumping from the upper Manhattan span over just a five-week period in July and August 2017.
The Port Authority installed a temporary metal fence and netting system in September 2017, with eyes towards a more permanent solution in the future, but the families said it was too little too late.
In filing their $100 million and $40 million lawsuits, respectively, the families of Feldman and Donaldson cited a 2012 ruling by a federal court justice that upstate Ithaca created “an unreasonably dangerous condition by failing to install safeguards” on the Thurston Avenue Bridge, a popular spot for Cornell University students to commit suicide.
But Bluth was not convinced, ruling that while perhaps bridges and other prominent public locales should have anti-suicide measures, it was not compulsory.
“[A] pedestrian cannot create a dangerous condition by running across Park Avenue without the walk sign and hold the city liable, or jump in front of a subway train and hold the transit authority liable,” the jurist wrote in the decisions obtained by The Post.
“The wrongful death action claimed here did not arise because of a dangerous condition on the bridge,” wrote Bluth in the Donaldson decision. “The cause of action rose out of Mr. Donaldson’s decision to jump off the bridge and commit suicide.”
“To hold otherwise would require property owners to assess the ways people might attempt to commit suicide on their property and implement preventative strategies or face potential liability.”
“This Court will not impose that burden.”
Both families declined to comment on the ruling.
Additional reporting by Aaron Feis