"Liability carrier stopped insuring"

From"I miss Riverdale Rollerworld in West Bridgewater" Facebook Group.

Ted Young
August 28, 2009

Many people have asked the question: "What happened to Riverdale Roller World?" It's a long and complex story. The story sort of starts around 1985, when our Liability carrier stopped insuring roller rinks. We could not find another carrier that would insure rinks, so we were operating without liability insurance. As you can imagine, many, many folks who fell and were injured filed suit. (In fact, we were once sued because a girl whose mother dropped her off for session was badly injured in an automobile accident in her boyfriend's car during the session! It turns out that the only time she entered the rink that night was to use the phone in the outer lobby to call her mother AFTER the accident!) We lever lost a case, but we had to pay lawyers to defend every suit. In 1987, after operating for 2 years without insurance, the controlling partner of the real estate, put the rink up for sale. As a minority partner in that partnership I filed a protest, to not avail. I made an offer to buy out my partners, but the controlling partner rejected the offer. In June of 1987, the controlling partner called me to tell me that he had an offer for the property, and that if I could match the offer within 10 days, he would sell it to me. I was unable to do so in that short a time-frame. Once the name of the purchaser became known to me, I contacted him and reached a verbal agreement to lease the rink from him, for, essentially half the amount I had been paying. However, he would not sign anything until the actual real estate closing took place. The closing was delayed several times, finally taking place in August 1987, during Speed Nationals. I had planned on signing the lease, and then joining my team at Nationals. On the day the closing actually took place, the 3rd day of Nationals, the buyers attorney advised his client that leasing to a roller rink was not a good idea, so he reneged on his verbal agreement and gave my 48-hours to have my equipment out!