The defendants also filed cross-claims. Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. When reviewing summary judgment, we apply the same methodology as the trial court. In a negligence action, the plaintiff must establish a duty of reasonable care owed by the defendant, a breach of that duty, a causal connection between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiff's injury, and damages as a result of the plaintiff's injury. Absent a showing of legal duty and its breach, there is no negligence.
Questions concerning breach of duty are ordinarily factual matters for the jury to decide.
They become questions of law when the material facts are undisputed and reasonable persons cannot differ as to inferences to be drawn from those facts. The Differts cite four facts that they allege were misstated by the trial court and were material to the trial court's decision granting summary judgment. Regardless of whether these findings were material to some other aspect of the case, they are not material to the dispositive legal issue of whether the defendants breached any legal duty owed to the Differts. Whether a breach of duty has occurred depends upon whether the resulting harm was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendants' acts. There is nothing in the record from which it can be inferred that Mrs. Differt's injuries were a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendants' acts of ordering the Differts off the construction site and then back on to the construction site in order to complete the work they were hired to perform.