Shu-Ra Ali v. City of Boston

In the early evening of March 12, 1997, while riding his bicycle through Franklin Park in the Roxbury section of Boston on the way home from a store, the plaintiff, Shu-Ra *234Ali, collided with a park gate and suffered injuries. He argues that, because he was injured while using the park for a nonrecreational purpose (that is, to ride home from the store), he falls outside the purview of the recreational use statute, G. L. c. 21, § 17C, which bars a recreational user’s claim for ordinary negligence against a landowner who has opened his land to the public for “recreational purposes.”1 A judge in…