The Appellate Division, Second Department, has made it a lot safer to exercise at a health club. In fact, if you exercise in a health club in the Second Department1 the health clubs, which are governed by General Business Law (GBL) §627-a, are now not only required to have an operable automated external defibrillator (AED) and a person trained in its use but also have an affirmative duty to actually use this life-saving device upon a club member in apparent cardiac distress. In Miglino v. Bally Total Fitness of Greater New York,2 the Second Department noted that “The risk of heart attacks following strenuous exercise is well recognized, and it has also been documented that the use of AED devices in such instances can be particularly effective if defibrillation is administered in the first few minutes after the cardiac episode commences… ‘Sudden cardiac arrest is a major unresolved health problem. Each year, it strikes more than 350,000 Americans… More than 95% of these people die because life-saving defibrillators arrive on the scene too late, if at all’.”
The Miglino court held that GBL 627-a “imposes an inherent duty to make use of the statutorily required AED” and, further, that such a duty was assumed at common law because defendant’s employee “was trained in the use of the AED [and] his failure to use the device was tantamount to not acting carefully.”
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