A Will County elementary school student broke his right arm during a field day race on an inflatable slide in May 2023, and the Illinois Appellate Court, Third District, has now held that at least six of the negligence allegations his mother brought against Oswego Community Unit School District 308 and related defendants survive dismissal under the Tort Immunity Act — reversing in part a trial court ruling that had wiped out all negligence claims.
The student, Chase Allumi, was a Southbury Elementary School pupil who had fractured the same arm in November 2022, a fact school personnel were alleged to have known. During the field day event, the complaint alleged that school-affiliated defendants organized a race on the inflatable slide provided by Bounce City Party Rentals, Inc. According to the complaint, other students collided with Chase as he was trying to exit the slide, causing him to fall and suffer a severe and permanent fracture injury to his right arm. His mother, Samantha Allumi, sued the school district, its board of education, and the Southbury Home and School Organization (SHSO), alleging thirteen lettered categories of negligent acts or omissions.
The defendants moved to dismiss under section 2-619 of the Code of Civil Procedure, invoking supervision immunity under section 3-108(a) of the Tort Immunity Act. The trial court granted the motion in full and dismissed all negligence counts with prejudice.
On appeal, the Third District held that most of the allegations — those involving how the race was directed and overseen while it was happening — were properly categorized as supervision and thus immune. But the court drew a new line for six specific allegations: failure to provide proper safety equipment at the slide's exit, failure to hold Chase back from participating given his known injury history (to the extent that conduct occurred before the event was ongoing), failure to notify parents of the field day, failure to advise parents that an inflatable slide would be used, failure to ensure medical clearance of participating students, and failure to provide a safe inflatable. The court held those allegations fall under the guard or warn category, not supervision.
The opinion acknowledged that no Illinois appellate court had previously addressed the specific meaning of guard or warn under section 3-109(c)(1), and that the Illinois Supreme Court in Murray v. Chicago Youth Center had recognized the guard-or-warn exception but declined to define it. Writing for the panel, Justice Peterson reasoned that because the legislature used the terms guard and warn in section 3-109(c)(1) rather than supervise, it must have intended a different meaning. To prevent guard or warn from being swallowed by supervision, the court held that guard or warn is limited to acts or omissions that took place ahead of time and in preparation for the activity, not while the entity was actively overseeing it.
The court also affirmed the trial court's ruling that SHSO qualifies as a local public entity under the Act, holding that SHSO's bylaws showed it was established for the purpose of uniting school staff and administration with parents, guardians, and the community while enhancing the quality of education provided to students, that it was subject to board of education oversight and required to adhere to all board policies, and that the school principal and a teacher representative sat on its board. The court noted that the absence of governmental funding is not determinative under Illinois Supreme Court precedent.
The case is remanded for the trial court to determine in the first instance whether racing on an inflatable slide constitutes a hazardous recreational activity under section 3-109(b) — a threshold question that must be resolved before the guard or warn exception in section 3-109(c)(1) can apply. The court denied the school district's motion to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction and denied both sides' requests for sanctions.