Case Title: Canney v. Strathglass Holdings, LLC

Citation: 

Docket Number: 2017 ME 64

State: maine

Court: Maine Supreme Court

Date: 2017-04-06T00:00:00Z

Document:
MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2017 ME 64 
Docket: 
Oxf-16-438 
Argued: 
March 3, 2017 
Decided: 
April 6, 2017 
 
Panel: 
ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ. 
 
 
AMY L. CANNEY  
 
v. 
 
STRATHGLASS HOLDINGS, LLC 
 
 
MEAD, J. 
[¶1]  Amy L. Canney appeals from a summary judgment entered by the 
Superior Court (Oxford County, Clifford J.) in favor of Strathglass Holdings, LLC, 
on Canney’s complaint asserting that Strathglass was liable for injuries 
sustained by her minor child, Nicholai, when he was bitten by a dog kept by 
Eric Burns, a neighbor who performed on-call maintenance work on properties 
owned by Strathglass.  Canney asserts that the court erred by determining as a 
matter of law that Burns was not acting within the scope of his employment at 
the time of the dog bite, and by granting summary judgment on the issue of 
Strathglass’s direct liability.  We affirm the judgment. 
 
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I.  BACKGROUND 
[¶2]  The summary judgment record establishes the following 
undisputed facts, which are viewed in the light most favorable to Canney, the 
nonprevailing party.  See Remmes v. Mark Travel Corp., 2015 ME 63, ¶ 3, 
116 A.3d 466.  Strathglass is a Maine limited liability company that owns eight 
residential rental units in Rumford.  At all times relevant to this action, 
Strathglass rented a unit in a duplex to Canney, who lived there with her 
thirteen-year-old son Nicholai, and rented the adjacent unit to Eric Burns. 
 
[¶3]  Peter Evans is the sole member of Strathglass.  Evans, who lived in 
Portland and was not always able to directly respond to emergencies or other 
problems arising at his rental properties, hired Burns to provide on-call 
maintenance and property management services.  In that role, Burns 
performed tasks such as showing apartments to potential renters, reviewing 
rental applications and contacting references, delivering written leases to 
tenants, collecting rent and security deposits, performing repairs, purchasing 
repair materials, painting, cutting grass, cleaning, and performing inspections 
of rental units.  Burns was given a key to access Strathglass’s rental units for 
maintenance purposes. 
 
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[¶4]  Burns did not work from an external office; rather, Strathglass 
instructed tenants to contact Burns by knocking on the door of his home or 
calling him on the phone.  Burns did not have set hours of employment, but 
Strathglass hoped that he would address tenants’ needs as they arose.  In return 
for his work, Burns was paid and was permitted to rent his unit using Section 8 
vouchers. 
 
[¶5]  On September 10, 2015, Burns’s girlfriend’s daughter invited 
Nicholai to use Burns’s swimming pool.  The pool was behind Burns’s unit in a 
private yard enclosed by a fence and gate.  Around this time, Burns was in his 
home fixing a piece of furniture.  While in Burns’s yard, Nicholai saw Burns 
come out of the back door of his unit with his two-year-old male pit bull that he 
keeps at the unit.  Burns’s pit bull approached Nicholai and glared at him, 
making him fearful that the dog might attack.  The dog first nipped and then bit 
down on Nicholai’s leg.  The dog was not restrained prior to biting Nicholai.  
Burns attempted to separate the dog from Nicholai after the attack.  Nicholai 
suffered serious injuries as a result of the bite.  Prior to this event, Burns’s dog 
had not bitten anyone or done anything to suggest to Burns that it was likely to 
bite someone.  Strathglass’s member, Evans, had been aware that Burns kept a 
 
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dog at his unit, but did not believe, and had no objective reason to believe, that 
Burns’s dog was dangerous. 
 
[¶6]  On June 22, 2015, Canney filed a five-count complaint in the 
Superior Court on behalf of Nicholai against Burns and Strathglass.  The 
complaint alleged that Burns possessed a dog with dangerous propensities; 
negligently failed to warn Nicholai about the dog; negligently failed to properly 
and reasonably secure the dog; and “was at all pertinent times the agent, 
servant or employee of [Strathglass] and was maintaining the property for the 
benefit of [Strathglass] and in the course of its business.” 
 
[¶7]  On January 25, 2016, Strathglass filed a motion for summary 
judgment, a supporting statement of material facts, and affidavits of Burns and 
Evans.  Canney opposed the motion.  See M.R. Civ. P. 56(h)(2).  The court 
granted Strathglass’s motion for summary judgment on the grounds that no 
material facts were in dispute, the bite occurred in an area controlled by Burns, 
Burns was not acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the bite, 
and there was no evidence of the dog’s vicious propensity. 
 
[¶8]  Thereafter, Canney filed a motion for default judgment against 
Burns after he failed to appear at an alternative dispute resolution session.  The 
 
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court granted Canney’s motion and, after a hearing on damages at which Burns 
did not appear, awarded Canney $75,000 plus interest and costs. 
 
[¶9]  Canney timely appealed from the court’s entry of summary 
judgment in favor of Strathglass.1  See 14 M.R.S. § 1851 (2016); M.R. App. P. 2. 
II.  DISCUSSION 
 
[¶10]  “Summary judgment is appropriate when the parties’ statements 
of material facts and the portions of the record referred to therein disclose no 
genuine issues of material fact and reveal that one party is entitled to judgment 
as a matter of law.”  Spencer v. V.I.P., Inc., 2006 ME 120, ¶ 5, 910 A.2d 366; see 
M.R. Civ. P. 56(c).  “We review the grant of a motion for summary judgment 
de novo and consider both the evidence and any reasonable inferences that the 
evidence produces in the light most favorable to the party against whom the 
summary judgment has been granted in order to determine if there is a genuine 
issue of material fact.”  Levis v. Konitzky, 2016 ME 167, ¶ 20, 151 A.3d 20 
(quotation marks omitted).  “We will affirm the grant of a summary judgment 
against a plaintiff who presents insufficient evidence to support an essential 
element in her cause of action, such that the defendant would be entitled to 
                                         
1  Canney first appealed from the entry of summary judgment prior to obtaining the default 
judgment against Burns, and we dismissed that appeal as interlocutory due to her unresolved claims 
against Burns. 
 
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judgment as a matter of law on that state of the evidence at a trial.”  Bell v. 
Dawson, 2013 ME 108, ¶ 16, 82 A.3d 827. 
A. 
Scope of Employment 
 
[¶11]  Canney asserts that the court erred by resolving the issue of 
whether Burns acted within the scope of his employment because that issue is 
a question of fact properly reserved for the fact-finder.  We have long held that 
whether an employee is acting within the scope of employment may be a 
question of fact or law depending on the evidence presented in a particular 
case.  See R. I. Mitchell, Inc. v. Belgrade Shoe Co., 152 Me. 100, 102, 125 A.2d 80 
(1956); Stevens v. Frost, 140 Me. 1, 3, 32 A.2d 164 (1943).  Here, all material 
facts have been deemed admitted by both parties; neither suggests the 
existence of any other facts—disputed or otherwise—that need to be explored 
on the scope of employment issue.  Thus, the court did not err in determining, 
as a question of law, whether Burns was acting within the scope of his 
employment. 
 
[¶12]  Next, we consider whether the court erred in concluding that 
Burns was not acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the dog 
bite.  The Restatement (Third) of Agency provides, in relevant part:  
An employee acts within the scope of employment when 
performing work assigned by the employer or engaging in a course 
 
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of conduct subject to the employer’s control.  An employee’s act is 
not within the scope of employment when it occurs within an 
independent course of conduct not intended by the employee to 
serve any purpose of the employer. 
 
Restatement (Third) of Agency § 7.07(2) (Am. Law Inst. 2006); see also Picher 
v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, 2009 ME 67, ¶ 32, 974 A.2d 286. 
 
[¶13]  Here, Burns was hired by Strathglass to provide on-call assistance 
for tenants’ emergencies and maintenance requests.  Part of his responsibility 
necessarily involved being reachable by tenants at his home or via his phone, 
and Strathglass hoped that Burns would respond to tenants’ needs as they 
arose.  However, the fact that Burns was on call at his home when Nicholai was 
injured does not, by itself, establish that Burns’s acts or omissions were within 
the scope of his employment by Strathglass.2  See Clickner v. City of Lowell, 
663 N.E.2d 852, 855 (Mass. 1996) (“Most jurisdictions have ruled that the mere 
fact of being on call does not place employees within the scope of their 
employment.”). 
 
[¶14]  Neither party disputes that Nicholai entered Burns’s private yard 
for purposes completely unrelated to Burns’s employment with Strathglass.  
                                         
2  We have held that injuries that occurred while an employee was “on call” were not necessarily 
within the course of employment for worker’s compensation purposes.  See Westberry v. Town of 
Cape Elizabeth, 492 A.2d 888, 890 (Me. 1985) (“The fact that [an employee] was on call twenty-four 
hours a day is not, without more, enough to bring him within the course of employment.”). 
 
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There is no record evidence suggesting that, at the time of the dog bite, Burns 
was performing any work assigned by Strathglass or that Burns was engaged 
in any course of conduct over which Strathglass had control.  To the contrary, 
the record indicates that Burns was in his home fixing a piece of furniture prior 
to the dog bite and that Nicholai entered the backyard of the property for purely 
recreational purposes. 
 
[¶15]  Canney urges us to find this case similar to Rodriguez v. Town of 
Moose River, which involved a town clerk who, pursuant to an agreement with 
the Town, conducted official town business from her home.  2007 ME 68, 
¶¶ 3, 4, 922 A.2d 484.  When visiting the clerk’s home to register two motor 
vehicles, Rodriguez fell down the building’s front stairs, which had no handrail.  
Id. ¶¶ 7-9.  We concluded that because the clerk “was required to open her 
home to the public as part of her duties . . . , her failure to replace the handrail 
on her stairs was an act within the scope of her employment” with the Town.  
Id. ¶ 26. 
 
[¶16]  Here, unlike the plaintiff in Rodriguez who was visiting the clerk’s 
home to conduct Town business, Nicholai entered Burns’s property for purely 
recreational purposes unrelated to any business with Strathglass.  Moreover, 
while Rodriguez entered the clerk’s home to conduct business using its front 
 
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stairs, there is nothing in the record suggesting that Burns’s gated and fenced 
backyard was an area where Burns’s duties to Strathglass were undertaken; 
Canney admitted in her pleadings that Burns’s yard was private and not shared 
with other tenants or the public. 
 
[¶17]  In sum, it is clear based on the uncontroverted facts that neither 
Burns’s acts or omissions nor Nicholai’s presence on his premises were in any 
way related to Burns’s employment or agency with Strathglass.  The court’s 
finding that Strathglass was entitled to a grant of summary judgment on 
Canney’s respondeat superior claims was proper. 
B. 
Direct Liability for Negligence 
 
[¶18]  Canney asserts that even if Burns was acting outside the scope of 
his employment, Strathglass is directly liable on a negligence theory for 
damages it proximately caused as the owner of business premises. 
 
[¶19]  To survive a summary judgment on a direct liability theory, Canney 
must assert a prima facie case of negligence against Strathglass.  See Stanton v. 
Univ. of Me. Sys., 2001 ME 96, ¶ 6, 773 A.2d 1045.  “A prima facie case of 
negligence requires a plaintiff to establish the following elements: a duty owed, 
a breach of that duty, and an injury to the plaintiff that is proximately caused 
by a breach of that duty.”  Id. ¶ 7. 
 
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[¶20]  Here, Canney asserts in her complaint that Strathglass is “licensed 
to do business in the State of Maine,” and that Burns was acting as Strathglass’s 
“agent, servant or employee . . . and was maintaining the property for the 
benefit of [Strathglass] and in the course of its business.”  These allegations 
suggest only that Strathglass is subject to vicarious liability for Burns’s acts or 
omissions.  Canney’s complaint fails to allege a theory of direct liability against 
Strathglass, and she offers no evidence in the summary judgment record that 
would support a direct claim of negligence against Strathglass.  Accordingly, the 
court did not err when it granted summary judgment on all counts of Canney’s 
complaint. 
 
The entry is: 
 
 
 
Judgment affirmed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
William C. Herbert, Esq. (orally), Hardy, Wolf & Downing, P.A., Lewiston, for 
appellant Amy L. Canney 
 
James B. Haddow, Esq. (orally), Petruccelli, Martin & Haddow, LLP, Portland, for 
appellee Strathglass Holdings, LLC 
 
 
Oxford County Superior Court docket number CV-2015-36 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY