J-S38016-19

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* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

TREVOR DARLING 

Appellant

v.

DICKINSON FLEET SERVICES, LLC

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 639 EDA 2019

Appeal from the Order Entered January 24, 2019

In the Court of Common Pleas of Monroe County Civil Division at No(s): 

No. 8857-CV-2015

BEFORE: OTT, J., DUBOW, J., and COLINS*, J.

MEMORANDUM BY DUBOW, J.: FILED OCTOBER 28, 2019

Appellant Trevor Darling appeals from the Order entered by the Monroe 

County Court of Common Pleas granting summary judgment to Appellee 

Dickinson Fleet Services. Appellant asserts that the trial court erred in 

granting the motion because he had alleged sufficient facts to establish that 

his shoulder injury resulted from Appellee’s negligence in repairing its truck. 

We glean the following summary of the facts of this case from our review 

of the reproduced record and the trial court’s Opinion granting Appellee’s 

Motion for Summary Judgment. See Trial Ct. Op., dated 1/24/19. Appellant 

filed a Summons and subsequent Complaint alleging that on December 19, 

2013, while he was attempting to open a roll-up door on a truck’s trailer, it 

stuck, causing him to injure his shoulder and neck. See Complaint, filed 
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12/21/15. He asserted that Appellee was responsible for repairing the door1

of the trailer prior to his injury and it did so negligently, causing Appellant’s 

injuries. Appellee answered and asserted new matter.

Discovery proceeded, including the production of invoices from Appellee 

showing it had not worked on the subject trailer, and deposition testimony 

from Appellant and some of his co-workers, none of whom could state 

definitively that Appellee had worked on the subject trailer prior to Appellant’s 

accident. Appellant did not present expert testimony.

On November 19, 2018, Appellee filed a Motion for Summary Judgment, 

to which Appellant responded with a Brief in Opposition. The court did not 

hold oral argument, and on January 24, 2019, after considering the 

submissions of the parties, entered an Order and Opinion granting the Motion 

for Summary Judgment. Appellant timely appealed.

Appellant raises one issue for our review: “[w]hether the [t]rial [c]ourt 

made an error in granting summary judgment in favor of Appellee when a 

genuine issue of material fact existed as to the evidence presenting 

substantiating negligence on behalf of the Appellee.” Appellant’s Brief at 5.

Summary judgment is appropriate where the pleadings fail to present a 

genuine issue as to a material fact “as to a necessary element of the cause of 

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1 Appellant worked as a tractor-trailer truck driver for Team One Contract 

Services, LLC, a subcontractor for UPS. He drove trailers containing Mazda 

vehicle parts throughout the East Coast. Appellee had, in the past, provided 

repair services to trailers owned and operated by UPS. The trailer that 

allegedly caused Appellant’s injury was owned by Extra Leasing, LLC.
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action” or when the party bearing the burden of proof has failed to present 

evidence sufficient to prove the facts “essential to the cause of action.” 

Pa.R.C.P. 1035.2. Our review is informed by the following precepts:

Motions for summary judgment necessarily and directly implicate 

the plaintiff's proof of the elements of her cause of action. 

Summary judgment is proper if, after the completion of discovery 

relevant to the motion, including the production of expert reports, 

an adverse party who will bear the burden of proof at trial has 

failed to produce evidence of facts essential to the cause of action 

or defense which in a jury trial would require the issues to be 

submitted to a jury. In other words, whenever there is no genuine 

issue of any material fact as to a necessary element of the cause 

of action or defense, which could be established by additional 

discovery or expert report and the moving party is entitled to 

judgment as a matter of law, summary judgment is appropriate. 

Thus, a record that supports summary judgment either (1) shows 

the material facts are undisputed or (2) contains insufficient 

evidence of facts to make out a prima facie cause of action or 

defense. 

Upon appellate review, we are not bound by the trial court's 

conclusions of law, but may reach our own conclusions. The 

appellate Court will disturb the trial court's order only upon an 

error of law or an abuse of discretion. 

Chenot v. A.P. Green Servs., Inc., 895 A.2d 55, 61 (Pa. Super. 2006)

(internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Further, “the issue as to 

whether there are no genuine issues as to any material fact presents a 

question of law, and therefore, on that question our standard of review is de 

novo.“ Summers v. Certainteed Corp., 997 A.2d 1152, 1159 (Pa. 2010) 

(citation omitted). Accordingly, we need not defer to the determinations made 

by the trial court. Id. “To the extent that this Court must resolve a question 
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of law, we shall review the grant of summary judgment in the context of the 

entire record.” Id.

For purposes of deciding a Motion for Summary Judgment, the record 

includes the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions, 

and affidavits. Bailets v. Pennsylvania Tpk. Comm’n, 123 A.3d 300, 301 

(Pa. 2015) (citing Pa.R.C.P. 1035.1(1), (2)). “Where the non-moving party 

bears the burden of proof on an issue, he may not merely rely on his pleadings 

or answers in order to survive summary judgment.” Truax v. Roulhac, 126 

A.3d 991, 997 (Pa. Super. 2015) (citation and quotation omitted). 

“It is axiomatic that the elements of a negligence-based cause of action 

are a duty, a breach of that duty, a causal relationship between the breach 

and the resulting injury, and actual loss.” Charlie v. Erie Ins. Exch., 100 

A.3d 244, 250 (Pa. Super. 2014) (citations omitted). 

While the existence of a duty is a question of law, whether there 

has been a neglect of such duty is generally for the jury. However, 

the issue of whether an act or a failure to act constitutes 

negligence may be removed from consideration by a jury and 

decided as a matter of law when the case is free from doubt and 

there is no possibility that a reasonable jury could find negligence.

Id. (citing Emerich v. Phila. Ctr. for Human Dev., Inc., 720 A.2d 1032, 

1044 (Pa. 1998)).

Appellant contends that, contrary to the trial court’s conclusion, his 

deposition testimony and that of his co-workers establishes the elements of 

negligence and, “at a minimum, [it] has created a genuine issue of material 

fact.” Appellant’s Br. at 14. He also asserts that “[t]his case even more 
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speaks to the legal principle of res ipsa loquitur” because Appellant showed 

that Appellee “was called out to perform repairs on the trailer door at issue[;]” 

Appellee took on the duty to perform the repairs[;]” and “the door would not 

have been jammed as it had been repeatedly identified to the Appellee and 

the Appellee had notice and undertook the duty to perform the repair.” Id. at 

14-15. “As such, clearly the Appellee’s negligence caused the Appellant’s 

harm.” Id. at 15.

In granting the Motion for Summary Judgment, the Hon. David J. 

Williamson rendered an Opinion thoroughly addressing the pleadings and 

evidence and providing a thoughtful analysis of the relevant law as applied to 

the facts. See Trial Ct. Op., dated Jan. 24, 2019, at 3-5 (finding Appellant 

“cannot prove” that Appellee owed any duty to him because: (1) Appellant 

“has not presented sufficient evidence that [Appellee] was ever hired to 

maintain the trailer in question or that [Appellee] worked on this specific trailer 

prior to his injury;” (2) Appellant was “unable to recall the number of the 

trailer he had been operating on the day of the accident;” (3) Appellee 

produced four invoices for work it had performed on trucks owned by UPS and 

“[t]he unit numbers of these trucks do not match the photographs of the truck 

[Appellant] alleges he was injured on;” (4) Appellant’s failure to discover 

documents stored in a facility out of state “does not alleviate [] his burden of 

establishing a prima facie case for breach of duty;” and (5) Appellant “is 

unable to affirmatively identify the trailer he was driving on the day of the 
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accident, let alone whether or not [Appellee] had recently serviced it” and he 

is, thus, unable “to meet the basic threshold to support his claim.”) 

With respect to the issue of res ipsa loquitur, the court observed:

First, there is the issue that [Appellant] has failed to adequately 

identify which trailer he was injured using and whether or not 

[Appellee] had ever attempted to service it. Without those facts, 

it is impossible to say [that] the injury could only have occurred 

due to the negligence of [Appellee.] Secondly, as the depositions

presented by [Appellant] show, the rollup doors of the trailers 

malfunctioned frequently whether they had been recently worked 

on or not. Therefore, it is impossible to say that [Appellant’s] 

incident is one which does not normally happen barring a 

negligent act or even that the negligence of [Appellant] or other 

third-parties was not a contributing factor.

Id. at 6.

Our review of the record, including all of the deposition testimony, and 

the applicable legal authority, supports the court’s rationale, and we see no 

reason to disturb it. Having found no abuse of discretion or error of law, we 

affirm the court’s grant of summary judgment to Appellee.

Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 10/28/19
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