Title: Copeland v. The Lodge Enterprises, Inc.

State: oklahoma

Issuer: Oklahoma Supreme Court

Document:

Copeland v. The Lodge Enterprises, Inc.  Copeland v. The Lodge Enterprises, Inc. 2000 OK 36 4 P.3d 695 71 OBJ 1172 Case Number: 92785 Decided: 05/09/2000 Mandate Issued: 06/14/2000 Supreme Court of Oklahoma JOYCE KATHLEEN COPELAND and PATRICK COPELAND, Appellants v. THE LODGE ENTERPRISES, INC., an Oklahoma Corporation, and SHARON ANDREWS, Appellees ON CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS, DIV. III ¶0 Joyce Kathleen Copeland and Patrick Copeland brought an action in the District Court, Muskogee County, Thomas Alford, trial judge, against The Lodge Enterprises, Inc., an Oklahoma corporation, and Sharon Andrews, an individual, for damages arising from a spider bite allegedly sustained by Mrs. Copeland during an overnight stay at the Days Inn Motel in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a roadside hotel owned by The Lodge Enterprises, Inc. and operated by Sharon Andrews. Summary judgment went to the defendants, and plaintiffs appealed. The Court of Civil Appeals, Div. III, affirmed. On certiorari granted on plaintiffs' petition, COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED; JUDGMENT OF TRIAL COURT REVERSED Steven R. Hickman, Frasier, Frasier & Hickman, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Appellants. Gregory D. Nellis, Galen L. Brittingham, and Margaret A. Nunnery, Atkinson, Haskins, Nellis, Boudreaux, Holeman, Phipps & Brittingham, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Appellees. OPALA, J. ¶1 The dispositive issue on certiorari is whether the trial court erroneously entered summary judgment for defendants. We answer in the affirmative. I ANATOMY OF LITIGATION ¶2 In November of 1992, Joyce Kathleen Copeland ("Copeland") was working as a pharmaceutical sales representative. While on a business trip, she spent the night as a paying guest at the Days Inn Motel in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a roadside hotel owned by The Lodge Enterprises, Inc. and operated by Sharon Andrews ("defendants"). Sometime during the night, she was allegedly bitten by a brown recluse spider. A search of Copeland's room several days later failed to turn up the offending arachnid. Copeland alleged the spider bite caused her to suffer severe, permanent, and disfiguring injuries. ¶3 Copeland originally sought recompense for her injuries in Workers Compensation Court, but her claim was denied. On appeal, the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the ruling, holding that Copeland's injury did not arise out of her employment.1 While the workers compensation claim was pending, Copeland and her husband, Patrick (jointly "plaintiffs") brought this action in the District Court, Muskogee County, alleging that the defendants were grossly negligent in failing to provide Copeland with a safe premises, free of "varmints, critters and harmful insects," or in the alternative, to warn of their presence. 2 Copeland sought damages for her injuries, and her husband for loss of services, society, companionship and consortium. ¶4 Defendants moved for summary judgment, in which they argued that (1) they had fulfilled their duty of care - owed to invitees - to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe and suitable condition, (2) their duty of care did not encompass protecting Copeland from injury from the bite of a brown recluse spider because the particular risk of harm from the presence of a brown recluse spider was not foreseeable; (3) they were not the insurers of the safety of motel guests; and (4) their conduct did not create or worsen any risk of harm, but rather prevented or lessened any such risk. ¶5 In support of their motion, defendants submitted copies of monthly invoices from Admiral Pest Control Co. ("Admiral") showing a continuous program of pest control services at the Days Inn from August 1989 through February1993, including the time period in which Copeland suffered her injury here in suit. 3 Defendants also tendered portions of Sharon Andrews' deposition. Andrews, who was the Days Inn manager at the time of Copeland's injury, testified that she was trained in motel management, including pest control, she had engaged Admiral to spray the motel premises for insects and other pests, she had given Admiral oral instructions that all pests were to be eliminated from the property, she sometimes personally watched as the pest control chemical was applied, she had terminated the services of the previous extermination company because it had failed to eradicate a roach infestation, she had never had to call Admiral because of a problem with any type of spider, and she had never received any complaints from customers other than Copeland about the presence of spiders. Andrews also testified in her deposition that on Monday or Tuesday morning after Copeland's incident the previous Wednesday, she and Admiral's exterminator searched for spiders in the room in which Copeland had stayed as well as several other rooms. Although no spiders were found, they nonetheless sprayed the rooms. According to her deposition, the Days Inn received two or three annual, unannounced inspections by the Oklahoma Department of Health and had not been cited for any deficiencies during her tenure as manager. 4 ¶6 In response, plaintiffs offered an affidavit from a (self-described) licensed, experienced exterminator, who stated that (1) brown recluse spiders are common and indigenous to eastern Oklahoma and (2) if reasonable care were exercised in the pest control treatment of a facility, brown recluse spiders would be eradicated. They also tendered a letter of apology from defendant Andrews, acknowledging that Oklahoma is known for spiders. Finally, plaintiffs offered copies of certain rules of the Oklahoma State Department of Health pertaining to lodging establishments, which condition licensure to operate a motel on compliance with the state's health and safety regulations. 5 Among these regulations is one requiring "effective methods of vermin control." 6 ¶7 On this record, the trial court entered summary judgment for the defendants, and plaintiffs appealed. The Court of Civil Appeals, Div. III, affirmed, holding that plaintiffs' tendered evidentiary material only "addressed the standard for exterminators, but did not speak to the standard of care of the innkeepers in devising an extermination program, or the knowledge of Lodge Enterprises." Hence, plaintiffs, having failed to tender "something" tending to prove that defendants breached their duty of care, left undisputed the latter's tendered proof that the motel had met its duty of care to keep the premises in a reasonably safe and suitable condition. Plaintiffs sought and were granted certiorari. We now reverse. II STANDARD OF REVIEW ¶8 Summary process - a special pretrial procedural track pursued with the aid of acceptable probative substitutes III THE NISI PRIUS SUMMARY JUDGMENT UNDER REVIEW IS ERRONEOUS ¶9 The question to be answered here is whether the evidentiary materials tendered by plaintiffs were sufficient to place disputed material (on the merits) facts in issue and hence to defeat defendants' motion for summary judgment. While the mere contention that material facts are in dispute is not sufficient to defeat a plea for summary judgment, neither is the nonmovant to be held to the standard of producing forensic evidence. ¶10 The affidavit of plaintiffs' licensed exterminator is not facially lacking in probative value, nor is it incapable of conversion at trial to admissible evidence. The elements of negligence are: (1) a duty owed by the defendant to protect the plaintiff from injury, (2) a failure properly to exercise or perform that duty, and (3) an injury to plaintiff proximately caused by the defendant's breach of that duty. ¶11 An innkeeper in Oklahoma continues to have a status-based, common-law duty of care to a guest. ¶12 Although a hirer ordinarily cannot be held liable for the negligence of an independent contractor, the rule of non-liability does not apply where the hirer contracts for the performance of a duty imposed by law. ¶13 The duty of an innkeeper to provide a reasonably safe premises encompasses the duty to use effective measures of pest control. A "defendant owes a duty of care to all persons who are foreseeably endangered by his conduct with respect to all risks which make the conduct unreasonably dangerous." ¶14 Because the innkeeper's duty of care to invitees is nondelegable, the duty to use effective measures of pest control encompasses not only the motel's own actions or omissions, but also those of an independent contractor/exterminator with whom the motel contracts to perform the services. ¶15 The affidavit of the licensed exterminator offered by plaintiffs in the case under review raises a disputed fact issue as to whether the Days Inn's extermination contractor might have been negligent in the performance of the pest control services. Plaintiffs are entitled to a jury''s consideration of this dispositive issue. IV SUMMARY ¶16 Where a genuine disputed issue of material fact (on the merits) exists, disposition of a cause by summary process is erroneous. The plaintiffs in the case here under review have presented evidentiary material sufficient to demonstrate a disputed fact issue, the resolution of which must be left to a jury. ¶17 COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED; JUDGMENT OF TRIAL COURT REVERSED ¶18 SUMMERS, C.J., HARGRAVE, V.C.J., and LAVENDER, OPALA, KAUGER, WATT, BOUDREAU, and WINCHESTER, JJ., concur. ¶19 HODGES, J., dissents. FOOT