Case Name: Charles ENIS and Jacqueline Enis, minors by Sarah Enis, their mother and next friend, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BA-CALL BUILDING CORPORATION, a corporation, Defendant-Appellee
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1980-09-22
Citations: 639 F.2d 359
Docket Number: No. 79-2310
Parties: Charles ENIS and Jacqueline Enis, minors by Sarah Enis, their mother and next friend, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BA-CALL BUILDING CORPORATION, a corporation, Defendant-Appellee.
Judges: Before FAIRCHILD, Chief Judge, and PELL and WOOD, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 639
Pages: 359–366

Head Matter:
Charles ENIS and Jacqueline Enis, minors by Sarah Enis, their mother and next friend, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BA-CALL BUILDING CORPORATION, a corporation, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 79-2310.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued April 7, 1980.
Decided Sept. 22, 1980.
Barry M. Woldman, Chicago, 111., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Judith E. Fors, Chicago, 111., for defendant-appellee.
Before FAIRCHILD, Chief Judge, and PELL and WOOD, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
FAIRCHILD, Chief Judge.
In this diversity action controlled by Illinois law, plaintiffs appeal from an order of the district court dismissing their tort action for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. We reverse and remand for further proceedings.
There is no dispute about the facts involved in this action. Defendant Ba-Call Building Corporation (Ba-Call), an Illinois corporation, owned a multiple dwelling unit in Maywood, Illinois. Plaintiffs Charles Enis and Jacqueline Enis lived with their mother Sarah Enis in that building in October and November of 1976. Sarah Enis had lived in the building for many years and was current in her rent payments as of November, 1976. Plaintiffs now live in Alabama. Ba-Call was required by local ordinance to provide heat at specified times and at specified minimum temperatures from October 1 of each year to May 1 of the succeeding year. Counsel for Ba-Call conceded at oral argument that Ba-Call was providing no heat to the Enis apartment in November, 1976, and was in violation of the Maywood ordinance. In order to provide heat in the apartment, Sarah Enis made use of an alternative heating method, constantly keeping water boiling in a turkey kettle on her kitchen stove. Defendant concedes that it knew that tenants in unheated apartments would utilize various alternative heating methods such as the one employed by Sarah Enis, the use of space heaters, or keeping the stove hot and open for long periods of time. Boiling water from the turkey kettle spilled on the two Enis children and injured them. There is no indication in the pleadings or at oral argument precisely how this accident occurred.
Plaintiffs filed this diversity action, claiming that defendant's failure to provide heat breached a duty owed to plaintiffs and that the plaintiffs were injured as a proximate result of that breach; the complaint sought damages on theories of negligence and wilful and wanton conduct. The dis trict court granted the defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings for failure to state a cause of action. It reached this result on two rationales. First, it held that the Maywood ordinance was designed to protect renters of multiple dwellings against discomfort and illness caused by maintenance of subnormal temperatures; because the injury complained of involved burns, that injury was not of the type against which the ordinance was designed and therefore violation of the ordinance could not be a source of liability in this action. Second, the court found that an intervening act broke the direct causal chain between the failure to provide heat and the injuries, so that there was no proximate cause required for recovery. Because the court indicated that "[i]t might have been foreseeable to the defendant that the plaintiffs would use an alternative means to heat their apartment," Enis v. Ba-Call, No. 78 C 3480 (N.D.Ill., June 15, 1979), it is not clear whether by intervening cause the court meant the use of the alternative heating method or some unknown act which caused the boiling water to spill from the turkey kettle. Plaintiffs' motion to set aside the judgment and for leave to file an amended complaint was denied. Plaintiffs appeal from these two orders of the district court.
In Illinois as a general rule landlords are not liable for injuries on premises leased to and under the control of a tenant. Shehy v. Bober, 78 Ill.App.3d 1061, 1066, 34 Ill.Dec. 405, 409, 398 N.E.2d 80, 84 (1979), citing Dapkunas v. Cagle, 42 Ill.App.3d 644, 647, 1 Ill.Dec. 387, 356 N.E.2d 575, 577 (1976); Thorson v. Aronson, 122 Ill.App.2d 156, 258 N.E.2d 33 (1970). The rule is, however, subject to several exceptions. Dapkunas v. Cagle, 42 Ill.App.3d 644, 647, 1 Ill.Dec. 387, 389, 356 N.E.2d 575, 577 (1976). Pertinent to the present case is the exception discussed in Mangan v. F.C. Pilgrim & Co., 32 Ill.App.3d 563, 336 N.E.2d 374 (1975): "The violation of a statute or ordinance prescribing a duty for the protection and safety of persons or property may constitute negligence such as gives rise to a cause of action on behalf of a person who suffers injury or damage by reason thereof . . . ." Id. at 569, 336 N.E.2d at 379.
In Mangan, plaintiff was an elderly woman who sued her landlord for damages arising from her fall after being scared by a mouse in her oven. The landlord was found to be responsible for the presence of the rodent because of failure by the landlord to rid the building of rodents, as required by a local ordinance. The ordinance was held to create a duty on the part of the landlord whose acts constituted breach of that duty. After finding that the plaintiff was intended to be protected by the ordinance, the court inquired whether the injury suffered was of the kind which the ordinance was enacted to prevent. It concluded that the presence of rodents in a building gives rise to numerous foreseeable dangers including the injury suffered by plaintiff and that therefore the violation of the ordinance proximately caused the injury. Id. at 569, 572, 336 N.E.2d at 379, 381.
It is obvious that the landlord breached a duty to the tenants in failing to provide heat as required by the ordinance. The district court correctly indicated that "for liability to exist, the plaintiff must be within the class of persons to be protected and the harm must be of a kind against which the statute was intended to protect." Enis v. Ba-Call, No. 78 C 3480 (N.D.Ill., June 15, 1979), citing Magnotti v. Hughes, 57 Ill.App.3d 1000, 1004, 15 Ill.Dec. 455, 458, 373 N.E.2d 801, 804 (1978); Mangan v. F.C. Pilgrim & Co., 32 Ill.App.3d 563, 572, 336 N.E.2d 374, 381 (1975). Mangan is strong authority for finding that in the present case the danger of injury from use of alternative heating methods was one of the harms against which the statute was intended to protect. In any event, Illinois courts treat this question as an issue of proximate cause which should be left for the trier of facts:
[I]n personal injury cases where liability is grounded in a statute or ordinance violation, questions of whether a plaintiff comes within the class of persons intended to be protected by the statute or ordinance and whether the injury is of the kind generally intended to be prevented have been dealt with in terms of proximate cause and, as such, are subject to the determinations of the triers of fact. (Felty v. New Berlin Transit, Inc. (1978), 71 Ill.2d 126, 130, 15 Ill.Dec. 768, 374 N.E.2d 203; Ney v. Yellow Cab Co. (1954), 2 Ill.2d 74, 84, 117 N.E.2d 74; Mangan, 32 Ill.App.3d 563, 569-72, 336 N.E.2d 374).
Shehy v. Bober, 78 Ill.App.3d 1061, 1067, 34 Ill.Dec. 405, 410, 398 N.E.2d 80, 85 (1979). Illinois courts have held that where an injury could be reasonably foreseen from a negligent act or omission, it is not necessary that the precise injury which occurred should have been foreseen. Blue v. St. Clair Country Club, 7 Ill.2d 359, 364, 131 N.E.2d 31, 34 (1955); Ney v. Yellow Cab Co., 2 Ill.2d 74, 117 N.E.2d 74 (1954).
Violation of a public safety statute is prima facie evidence of negligence and such violation is actionable when there is shown to be a direct proximate causal relation between the violation and the injury. Ney v. Yellow Cab Co., 2 Ill.2d 74, 78-79, 117 N.E.2d 74, 78 (1954); Ding v. Kraemer, 59 Ill.App.3d 1042, 1044, 17 Ill.Dec. 267, 269, 376 N.E.2d 266, 268 (1978). As this court observed in Wright v. General Motors Corp., 479 F.2d 52 (7th Cir. 1973):
Under Illinois law, before an intervening force will relieve a defendant from liability for his wrongful conduct, the intervening force must itself be outside of the range of reasonable anticipation as a consequence of the defendants' wrongful conduct . . . . Where the question of whether the intervening force or event was a reasonable foreseeable consequence of the defendants' conduct is one over which reasonable men might differ, the issue of proximate cause . is for the jury to decide under appropriate instructions.
Id. at 53. The district court in this action decided that there was no proximate cause shown in this action because of "an independent action on the part of the plaintiff's mother." As indicated previously, we cannot be certain what event the district court was referring to. Nevertheless, it appears to us that neither the foreseeability of injury from use of alternative means of heating nor the events occurring immediately before the spilling of the boiling water on the plaintiffs are events so clear that these issues should have been taken from the province of the trier of fact.
Accordingly, the orders appealed from are Reversed and Remanded.
. Village of Maywood, Illinois, Ordinance sec. 7.77 provides:
Sec. 7.77 Heating of apartment houses, factories and work shops.
It shall be the duty of every person owning or controlling any apartment house, in which the heat is furnished from a heating plant used in common for the purpose of heating the various rooms and apartments therein and such heating plant is under the control or supervision of such owner or person in control of such building, to furnish heat to such rooms and apartments from the first day of October of each year to the first day of May of the succeeding year, so that the occupants thereof may secure, without such undue restrictions of ventilation as to interfere with proper sanitary conditions, a minimum temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit at 6:30 A.M., sixty-eight degrees at 7:30 A.M. and seventy-two degrees at 8:30 A.M. and thereafter until 10:30 P.M., averaged throughout the apartment.
. Appellee attempts to distinguish Mangan from the present case, arguing that Mangan presents a much clearer line of causation. We are not persuaded that the differences are significant. Mangan found the lower court judgment for plaintiff appropriate on two rationales. First was that the landlord's duty to maintain the areas of the building under his control free from rodents made the landlord liable for plaintiff's injury despite the fact that the injury took place in an area under her control. 32 Ill.App.3d 563, 569, 336 N.E.2d 374, 379 (1975). Second was that the landlord's duty under the ordinance to prevent rodent infestation of the building was breached and that the injury to plaintiff upon falling after being frightened by a mouse in her oven was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that breach. Subject to other facts which may be brought out at trial, nothing in the record of the present case convinces us that the line of causation is not as clear as in Mangan. In the present case, the chain of causation is that violation of the ordinance breached the landlord's duty to the tenants, causing plaintiff to use alternative heating methods which somehow led to the injury to plaintiffs.