Court affirms dismissal of premises liability matter

By Correy E. Stephenson
BridgeTower Media Newswires
 
DETROIT—Where the plaintiff failed to establish the necessary elements for a premises liability claim or that the defendants breached their statutory duty, summary disposition of the lawsuit was appropriate, a panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled.

In Rutledge v. Suffolk Court Apartments, the panel agreed with the trial court that all of the plaintiffs’ claims should be dismissed and that no amount of discovery could change that conclusion.

The unpublished per curiam opinion was issued by Judges Stephen L. Borrello, Kirsten Frank Kelly and Deborah A. Servitto.

Background

Thirteen-year-old Amarionette J. Rutledge was hit by a car and injured while walking across Pierson Road to his and his mother’s apartment at Suffolk Court Apartments.

Rutledge was crossing the road to enter the apartment complex’s driveway, but there was no sidewalk or pedestrian crossing signal where he crossed.

He was struck while in the turn lane of the five-lane Pierson Road.

Legal action

Rutledge sued Suffolk Court Apartments and several unidentified apartment complex employees, alleging they were liable under theories of “premise negligence,” violation of statutory duties, nuisance and ordinary negligence.

The Suffolk defendants moved for summary disposition, arguing that Rutledge’s complaint was a thinly veiled premises liability action that failed because the accident occurred off the premises at issue, where the Suffolk defendants had no possession or control.

Granting the motion, the Genesee Circuit Court ruled that the Suffolk defendants owed Rutledge no cognizable duty.

The plaintiff appealed.

Analysis

Rutledge asserted that the trial court did not view the evidence in the light most favorable to him and that summary disposition was premature because discovery was not complete in the dispute.

The COA was not persuaded.

“We agree with the trial court that no amount of discovery could change that defendants owed no duty to plaintiff, and plaintiff has provided no independent evidence that a factual dispute exists,” the COA wrote. “We also find that the trial court properly viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff in rendering its decision.”

Turning to the merits of the appeal, Rutledge told the COA that the trial court improperly restated his claim, as he plead just ordinary negligence, not premises liability.

But courts are not bound by the labels that parties attached to their claims, the COA said, and while the plaintiff may have labeled his claim “premise negligence,” it set forth allegations that Rutledge’s injury arose from a condition on the land (a purportedly faulty sidewalk or driveway), “which constitutes a premises-liability claim.”

Analyzing the claim under the requirements of a premises liability action, the “plaintiff cannot establish even the first element … a duty owed by the Suffolk defendants,” the COA wrote.

It was undisputed that the accident did not occur directly on the Suffolk defendants’ premises, but instead occurred in the turn lane of a public road, which was outside of the Suffolk defendants’ possession and control.

While the plaintiff argued that the location of the driveway into the apartment complex and the lack of an available crosswalk there constituted a dangerous condition, the driveway (and potential crosswalk) merely led to the potentially dangerous condition — the busy road, the COA said.

“A defendant may not be held liable for injuries caused by a hazard outside of its premises and outside of its control simply because the means of egress from the defendant’s premises led to the hazard,” the COA wrote. “The Suffolk defendants simply did not have control or possession over that danger, thus, plaintiff’s injury is not the legal
responsibility of the Suffolk defendants’; their duty ended at the boundaries of the premises that they owned, possessed, and/or controlled.”

Even if the Suffolk defendants owed some conceivable duty to Rutledge, “we would still find them not liable to plaintiff because the danger presented was open and obvious,” the COA added. “[A]n average user — even an average 13-year-old user — with ordinary intelligence would have been able to discover that crossing a five-lane heavily trafficked highway was dangerous and presented a risk upon casual inspection.”

The COA rejected Rutledge’s alternative argument that the condition was unavoidable.

“Here, plaintiff was not ‘effectively trapped’ into deciding to walk across a five-lane road to and from a Dollar General,” the COA said. “He could have walked to the crosswalk, and plaintiff’s argument that walking the 7/10ths of a mile to the crosswalk rendered it ‘effectively avoidable’ is not persuasive.”

Rutledge’s argument that the Suffolk defendants owed him a statutory duty under MCL 554.139 also failed.

Although the entryway to the apartment complex was a “common area” that the Suffolk defendants were required to keep “fit for use,” that duty was satisfied as long as it was suitable for tenants to drive their vehicles in and out of the complex, the COA said.

“Because plaintiff has not identified any evidence to show that vehicles were not able to enter into and exit from the complex, there is no viable path for plaintiff to survive summary disposition on this claim,” the COA wrote.

As for his nuisance claim, Rutledge could not make out a claim under either the nuisance per se or nuisance in fact theories, the COA found.

A condition cannot be a nuisance per se unless it is a “nuisance at all times and under any circumstances,” and the purportedly dangerous nature of the intersection of the Suffolk Court apartment complex entrance and exit with Pierson Road was only potentially a nuisance when coupled with pedestrians “or, more precisely, pedestrians who are jaywalking,” the COA said.

Nor was it a nuisance in fact, as the danger of crossing the road where Rutledge did “was not a hidden danger on the land.”

Neither Loyst Fletcher Jr., who represented Rutledge, nor Drew W. Broaddus, who represented the Suffolk defendants, responded to a request for comment.