An ex-con’s visit to Bible camp has brought down the vengeance of “The Blob.”
Brock Charles — who sued after he got hurt at an upstate religious retreat — deserves a trial over the broken bones he suffered while cavorting on a giant water toy, a judge has ruled.
Charles, 29, claims the air-filled contraption — commonly known as a water blob, or simply “The Blob” — was underinflated when a 300-pound fellow camper tried to launch him into the waters of Lake Champion by jumping on the other end of the device in September 2010.
Charles sued the camp’s owner, the Young Life evangelical Christian ministry, for negligence after his right leg got caught in a “deflated section” of The Blob, breaking his ankle and both bones in his calf.
Young Life tried to get the case tossed on the grounds that Charles was “well aware of the risks” of using The Blob and had violated safety rules by squatting on it instead of sitting on the far edge, as instructed. But White Plains federal Judge Vincent Briccetti OK’d the case for trial, noting that an inspection by the manufacturer after the accident revealed that the toy “had an air-leaking problem, because its seams had not been properly sealed.”
Briccetti also ruled that “there are genuine disputes of material fact regarding whether plaintiff recognized injury could result from being launched from a squatting position on an underinflated Blob.”
According to his testimony at a September 2011 deposition, Charles, who did time in jail and admitted to a history of pill-popping, went to the Sullivan County campgrounds for the Long Island Teen Challenge, a faith-based drug- and alcohol-treatment program.
On his second day there, Charles said, he was canoeing with a friend named Jack when they saw people playing on the Blob and he decided to give it a whirl. On his third turn as a “blobbee,” Charles said a “big fellow” jumped off the wooden tower overhead just as the Blob “was deflating” around his leg.
He said he felt “a pop and instant pain” as he was catapulted about 20 feet into the air and into the lake, where he had to be rescued by another camper.
After being taken to the hospital, Charles needed surgery to install four screws in his leg and ankle, and still has pain that on “a scale from one to ten, it’s like a seven every day,” he said.
Young Life’s lawyers didn’t return requests for comment.