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TALLAHASSEE - The state Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether a city should have warned people about the dangers of swimming in the ocean in a case that could have far-reaching implications.
To tourists Eugenie Poleyeff and her husband, visiting Miami Beach in 1997, the beach at the foot of 29th Street seemed like a good place to swim. It had restrooms, a changing facility and a beach chair concession.
But on the day Poleyeff swam there, the ocean also had dangerous rip currents.
She was swept away from the beach and yelled for help. Another tourist, Zachary Breaux, heard her. While his wife went to look for a lifeguard, Breaux went into the ocean to help Poleyeff.
Both Breaux, 36, and Poleyeff, a 66-year-old schoolteacher from Brooklyn, drowned.
Their families sued, arguing that the city of Miami Beach should have had a lifeguard at that location - or at least signs warning of the dangers of swimming there - precisely because it was such a nice place for beachgoers.
"The city knew that people would tend to swim where these amenities were present," said Nancy Little Hoffman, a lawyer for Breaux's widow, Frederica.
Breaux, of New York, was an up-and-coming jazz musician with a CD in the top 20 on the Billboard charts when he died. A year earlier, he saved someone from drowning while on tour in Italy.
The case was thrown out by the trial court and an appeals court upheld the decision. But lawyers for survivors of both victims told the seven justices the city had a common-law duty to protect people from dangers it knew might occur or at least warn them, just as it did at other areas of the beach.
There were lifeguard stands at 21st and 35th streets, and lifeguards there had put up riptide warnings that day.
Miami Beach and other cities argue that the law has long held that cities can't be required to protect people from some events beyond their control.
"The city can't control the ocean," said Christopher Bellows, an attorney representing Miami Beach.
Several other seaside Florida cities joined in arguing that a ruling in favor of the victims' survivors could leave cities open to thousands of lawsuits for things entirely outside their control.
"The danger in this case is a spontaneous, unpredictable naturally occurring event for which no one should be held liable," two cities, North Miami and Surfside, argued in a friend-of-the-court brief.
The Supreme Court doesn't have a definite timetable for ruling on the case.