OCEAN CITY — A civil suit filed against the Town of Ocean City last August after a wheelchair fall was dismissed this week in federal court and will now be heard in Worcester County Circuit Court.
Last Aug. 20, Oda Wendt, 89, of Philadelphia, filed suit in U.S. District Court seeking a combined $750,000 in damages on three counts including negligence, strict liability and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The town was the primary defendant in the case, which asserts Wendt fell from her wheelchair on a downtown street corner allegedly due to a faulty rubber handicap mat.
From the beginning, there was some question of liability, with the town asserting the State Highway Administration (SHA) installed the faulty mat. As a result, Wendt’s original complaint was amended to add SHA as a co-defendant in the case. However, the amended complaint raised jurisdictional issues with the case and ultimately led to it being dismissed this week on the federal level.
“The plaintiff amended the complaint to bring in State Highway, and when they did that, the state filed a motion to dismiss,” said Ocean City Solicitor Guy Ayres this week. “The issue is, one can’t sue the state in federal court because of diversity. Rather than dismiss the state out of the federal case, the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the case in federal court and will refile it in Worcester County Circuit Court.”
According to the complaint, on June 16, 2012, the plaintiff, Oda Wendt, 89, of Philadelphia, arrived in Ocean City for her first-ever vacation in the resort. Around 7:50 p.m., Wendt and her family left their condominium to visit the Boardwalk and Wendt was being pushed in a wheelchair by her daughter, Astrid Seiger.
After visiting the Boardwalk, Wendt and her family were going back to their condo and attempted to cross Philadelphia Ave. at Worcester Street from east to west. According to the complaint, the daughter was pushing Wendt in the wheelchair when it struck one of the hard rubber warning mats on the handicap-accessible street corners.
“As Ms. Seiger was pushing the wheelchair up onto the handicap section of the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Worcester Street and Philadelphia Ave, the front wheel of the wheelchair struck a piece of the hard rubber warning mat partially attached to the ramp,” the complaint reads. “This motion caused the wheelchair to stop suddenly, causing the plaintiff to fall out of the wheelchair and sustain an open fracture to her left arm.”
In September, the town filed its formal answer to the case, shifting culpability to SHA, which installed the rubber warning mats after the town completed a comprehensive upgrade of the sidewalks to make them ADA code compliant.
Essentially, the federal suit alleged while SHA installed the rubber warning mat in question, it is the town’s responsibility to maintain the safety of its sidewalks. However, after the town filed its answer to the suit seeking a dismissal, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint shifting the blame, at least in part, to the state and SHA.