Opinion ID: 2115687
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Duty Equation

Text: The threshold question in any negligence action is: does defendant owe a legally recognized duty of care to plaintiff? Courts traditionally fix the duty point by balancing factors, including the reasonable expectations of parties and society generally, the proliferation of claims, the likelihood of unlimited or insurer-like liability, disproportionate risk and reparation allocation, and public policies affecting the expansion or limitation of new channels of liability ( Palka v Servicemaster Mgt. Servs. Corp., 83 NY2d 579, 586; see also, Strauss v Belle Realty Co., 65 NY2d 399, 402-403). Thus, in determining whether a duty exists, courts must be mindful of the precedential, and consequential, future effects of their rulings, and `limit the legal consequences of wrongs to a controllable degree' ( Lauer v City of New York, 95 NY2d 95, 100 [quoting Tobin v Grossman, 24 NY2d 609, 619]). Foreseeability, alone, does not define dutyit merely determines the scope of the duty once it is determined to exist ( see, Pulka v Edelman, 40 NY2d 781, 785, rearg denied 41 NY2d 901; see also, Eiseman v State of New York, 70 NY2d 175, 187). The injured party must show that a defendant owed not merely a general duty to society but a specific duty to him or her, for [w]ithout a duty running directly to the injured person there can be no liability in damages, however careless the conduct or foreseeable the harm ( Lauer, supra, at 100). That is required in order to avoid subjecting an actor to limitless liability to an indeterminate class of persons conceivably injured by any negligence in that act ( Eiseman, supra, at 188). Moreover, any extension of the scope of duty must be tailored to reflect accurately the extent that its social benefits outweigh its costs ( see, Waters v New York City Hous. Auth., 69 NY2d 225, 230). The District Court imposed a duty on gun manufacturers to take reasonable steps available at the point of    sale to primary distributors to reduce the possibility that these instruments will fall into the hands of those likely to misuse them ( Hamilton v Accu-Tek, supra, 62 F Supp 2d, at 825). We have been cautious, however, in extending liability to defendants for their failure to control the conduct of others. A defendant generally has no duty to control the conduct of third persons so as to prevent them from harming others, even where as a practical matter defendant can exercise such control ( D'Amico v Christie, 71 NY2d 76, 88; see also, Purdy v Public Adm'r of County of Westchester, 72 NY2d 1, 8, rearg denied 72 NY2d 953). This judicial resistance to the expansion of duty grows out of practical concerns both about potentially limitless liability and about the unfairness of imposing liability for the acts of another. A duty may arise, however, where there is a relationship either between defendant and a third-person tortfeasor that encompasses defendant's actual control of the third person's actions, or between defendant and plaintiff that requires defendant to protect plaintiff from the conduct of others. Examples of these relationships include master and servant, parent and child, and common carriers and their passengers. The key in each is that the defendant's relationship with either the tortfeasor or the plaintiff places the defendant in the best position to protect against the risk of harm. In addition, the specter of limitless liability is not present because the class of potential plaintiffs to whom the duty is owed is circumscribed by the relationship. We have, for instance, recognized that landowners have a duty to protect tenants, patrons or invitees from foreseeable harm caused by the criminal conduct of others while they are on the premises ( see, e.g., Nallan v Helmsley-Spear, Inc., 50 NY2d 507, 518-519). However, this duty does not extend beyond that limited class of plaintiffs to members of the community at large ( see, Waters v New York City Hous. Auth., supra, 69 NY2d, at 228-231). In Waters, for example, we held that the owner of a housing project who failed to keep the building's door locks in good repair did not owe a duty to a passerby to protect her from being dragged off the street into the building and assaulted. The Court concluded that imposing such a duty on landowners would do little to minimize crime, and the social benefits to be gained did not warrant the extension of the landowner's duty to maintain secure premises to the millions of individuals who use the sidewalks of New York City each day and are thereby exposed to the dangers of street crime ( id., at 230). A similar rationale is relevant here. The pool of possible plaintiffs is very largepotentially, any of the thousands of victims of gun violence. [1] Further, the connection between defendants, the criminal wrongdoers and plaintiffs is remote, running through several links in a chain consisting of at least the manufacturer, the federally licensed distributor or wholesaler, and the first retailer. The chain most often includes numerous subsequent legal purchasers or even a thief. [2] Such broad liability, potentially encompassing all gunshot crime victims, should not be imposed without a more tangible showing that defendants were a direct link in the causal chain that resulted in plaintiffs' injuries, and that defendants were realistically in a position to prevent the wrongs. Giving plaintiffs' evidence the benefit of every favorable inference, they have not shown that the gun used to harm plaintiff Fox came from a source amenable to the exercise of any duty of care that plaintiffs would impose upon defendant manufacturers. Plaintiffs make two alternative arguments in support of a duty determination here. The first arises from a manufacturer's special ability to detect and guard against the risks associated with [its] products [and] warrants placing all manufacturers, including these defendants, in a protective relationship with those foreseeably and potentially put in harm's way by their products  ( Hamilton v Accu-Tek, supra, 62 F Supp 2d, at 821 [emphasis added]). Plaintiffs predicate the existence of this protective dutyparticularly when lethal or hazardous products are involvedon foreseeability of harm and our products liability cases such as MacPherson v Buick Motor Co. (217 NY 382). As we noted earlier, a duty and the corresponding liability it imposes do not rise from mere foreseeability of the harm ( see, Pulka, supra, 40 NY2d, at 786). Moreover, none of plaintiffs' proof demonstrated that a change in marketing techniques would likely have prevented their injuries. Indeed, plaintiffs did not present any evidence tending to show to what degree their risk of injury was enhanced by the presence of negligently marketed and distributed guns, as opposed to the risk presented by all guns in society ( see generally, Twerski & Sebok, Liability Without Cause? Further Ruminations on Cause-in-Fact as Applied to Handgun Liability, 32 Conn L Rev 1379). The cases involving the distribution or handling of hazardous materials, relied upon by plaintiffs, do not support the imposition of a duty of care in marketing handguns. The manufacturer's duty in each case was based either on a products liability theorythat is, the product was defective because of the failure to include a safety featureor on a failure to warn ( see, e.g., Hunnings v Texaco, Inc., 29 F3d 1480 [11th Cir 1994] [defectively packaged hazardous substance accompanied by lack of adequate warnings]; Blueflame Gas v Van Hoose, 679 P2d 579 [Colo 1984] [insufficiently odorized propane gas]; Flint Explosive Co. v Edwards, 84 Ga App 376, 66 SE2d 368 [1951] [defective dynamite]). Certainly too, a manufacturer may be held liable for complicity in dangerous or illegal activity ( see, e.g., Suchomajcz v Hummel Chem. Co., 524 F2d 19 [3d Cir 1975] [manufacturer sold chemicals to retailer with knowledge that retailer intended to use them in making and selling illegal firecracker assembly kits]). Here, defendants' products are concededly not defectiveif anything, the problem is that they work too well. Nor have plaintiffs asserted a defective warnings claim or presented sufficient evidence to demonstrate that defendants could have taken reasonable steps that would have prevented their injuries. Likewise, this case can hardly be analogized to those in which a duty has been imposed upon owners or possessors of hazardous substances to safeguard against unsupervised access by children ( see, Kush v City of Buffalo, 59 NY2d 26, 31; Kingsland v Erie County Agric. Socy., 298 NY 409, 426). Plaintiffs also assert that a general duty of care arises out of the gun manufacturers' ability to reduce the risk of illegal gun trafficking through control of the marketing and distribution of their products. The District Court accepted this proposition and posited a series of structural changes in defendants' marketing and distribution regimes that might reduce the risk of criminal misuse by ensuring that the first sale was by a responsible merchant to a responsible buyer ( Hamilton v Accu-Tek, supra, 62 F Supp 2d, at 820). Those changes, and others proposed by plaintiffs that a jury might reasonably find subsumed in a gun manufacturer's duty of care, [3] would have the unavoidable effect of eliminating a significant number of lawful sales to responsible buyers by responsible Federal firearms licensees (FFLs) who would be cut out of the distribution chain under the suggested reforms. Plaintiffs, however, presented no evidence, either through the testimony of experts or the submission of authoritative reports, showing any statistically significant relationship between particular classes of dealers and crime guns. [4] To impose a general duty of care upon the makers of firearms under these circumstances because of their purported ability to control marketing and distribution of their products would conflict with the principle that any judicial recognition of a duty of care must be based upon an assessment of its efficacy in promoting a social benefit as against its costs and burdens ( see, Waters v New York City Hous. Auth., 69 NY2d 225, supra ). Here, imposing such a general duty of care would create not only an indeterminate class of plaintiffs but also an indeterminate class of defendants whose liability might have little relationship to the benefits of controlling illegal guns ( see, Waters, supra, 69 NY2d, at 230). Finally, plaintiffs and the District Court identify an alternative basis for imposing a duty of care here under the negligent entrustment doctrine, arising out of the firearms manufacturers' authority over downstream distributors and retailers to whom their products are delivered ( see, Hamilton v Accu-Tek, supra, 62 F Supp 2d, at 821). The owner or possessor of a dangerous instrument is under a duty to entrust it to a responsible person whose use does not create an unreasonable risk of harm to others ( see, Rios v Smith, 95 NY2d 647; Splawnik v Di Caprio, 146 AD2d 333, 335; Restatement [Second] of Torts § 390). The duty may extend through successive, reasonably anticipated entrustees ( see, Rios v Smith, supra ). There are, however, fatal impediments to imposing a general duty of care here under a negligent entrustment theory. The tort of negligent entrustment is based on the degree of knowledge the supplier of a chattel has or should have concerning the entrustee's propensity to use the chattel in an improper or dangerous fashion. Gun sales have subjected suppliers to liability under this theory ( see, Splawnik, supra ; see also, Cullum & Boren-McCain Mall v Peacock, 267 Ark 479, 592 SW2d 442 [1980]; Semeniuk v Chentis, 1 Ill App 2d 508, 117 NE2d 883 [1954]). Of course, without the requisite knowledge, the tort of negligent entrustment does not lie ( see, Earsing v Nelson, 212 AD2d 66 [dismissing a negligent entrustment claim against the manufacturer of a BB gun because a dealer's knowledge of the individual's ability to use the gun safely could not be imputed to the manufacturer]). The negligent entrustment doctrine might well support the extension of a duty to manufacturers to avoid selling to certain distributors in circumstances where the manufacturer knows or has reason to know those distributors are engaging in substantial sales of guns into the gun-trafficking market on a consistent basis. [5] Here, however, plaintiffs did not present such evidence. Instead, they claimed that manufacturers should not engage in certain broad categories of sales. Once again, plaintiffs' duty calculation comes up short. General statements about an industry are not the stuff by which a common-law court fixes the duty point. Without a showing that specific groups of dealers play a disproportionate role in supplying the illegal gun market, the sweep of plaintiffs' duty theory is far wider than the danger it seeks to avert. [6] At trial, plaintiffs' experts did surmise that since manufacturers receive crime gun trace requests conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, they could analyze those requests to locate retailers who disproportionately served as crime gun sources, and cut off distributors who do business with them. In essence, plaintiffs argue that defendants had an affirmative duty to investigate and identify corrupt dealers. This is neither feasible nor appropriate for the manufacturers. Plaintiffs' experts explained that a crime gun trace is the means by which the BATF reconstructs the distribution history of a gun used in a crime or recovered by the police. [7] While manufacturers may be generally aware of traces for which they are contacted, they are not told the purpose of the trace, nor are they informed of the results. [8] The BATF does not disclose any subsequently acquired retailer or purchaser information to the manufacturer. Moreover, manufacturers are not in a position to acquire such information on their own. Indeed, plaintiffs' law enforcement experts agreed that manufacturers should not make any attempt to investigate illegal gun trafficking on their own since such attempts could disrupt pending criminal investigations and endanger the lives of undercover officers. Federal law already has implemented a statutory and regulatory scheme to ensure seller responsibility through licensing requirements and buyer responsibility through background checks. [9] While common-law principles can supplement a manufacturer's statutory duties, we should be cautious in imposing novel theories of tort liability while the difficult problem of illegal gun sales in the United States remains the focus of a national policy debate ( see, Lytton, Tort Claims Against Gun Manufacturers, supra, 65 Mo L Rev, at 52-54 [analyzing courts' capacities and limitations in analyzing complex statistical data]). In sum, analysis of this State's longstanding precedents demonstrates that defendantsgiven the evidence presented heredid not owe plaintiffs the duty they claim; we therefore answer the first certified question in the negative.