Opinion ID: 2302820
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Rhode Island Case Law

Text: As acknowledged by both parties, in cases involving social hosts, [w]e consistently have refused to recognize a duty owed by a host to third parties for injuries caused by an intoxicated guest who consumed alcohol at the host's premises, absent a duty-triggering special relationship. Willis, 954 A.2d at 130. Here, however, the circumstances of the action do not cleanly align with the factual template generally associated with social-host-liability cases. Despite the underlying facts concerning alcohol consumption in this case, Mr. Clukey was not socially hosting Mr. Milner at his premises. Nevertheless, the analyses and reasoning underpinning our line of social-host-liability cases provide invaluable guidance in ruminating and resolving the matter now before this Court. In a similar fashion, our past precedent addressing the implications of a special relationship between the parties in determining a duty illumines the path we now embark upon. In 1995, this Court encountered the concept of social-host liability for the first time in Ferreira v. Strack, 652 A.2d 965 (R.I.1995). In Ferreira, two pedestrians injured by an intoxicated driver brought suit against the hosts of a party at which the driver had consumed alcohol on the night of the accident. The social hosts successfully moved for summary judgment in Superior Court on the theory that they owed no duty to the plaintiffs to prevent the intoxicated guest from operating his vehicle that evening. The plaintiffs appealed and contended that because the hosts actually or constructively knew that the driver was intoxicated and intended on operating a motor vehicle, they owed a duty of care to the general public to prevent him from doing so. Id. at 967. On appeal, we considered the specific question of whether there exists a duty of care owed by a defendant social host to an innocent third party who suffers injuries as a result of the negligent operation of a motor vehicle by an adult guest if the negligence is caused by the guest's intoxication. Ferreira, 652 A.2d at 967. In arriving at the answer to this question, we acknowledged that this Court had never adopted the principle that a social host owes a duty to a third person injured by an intoxicated person who has obtained intoxicating liquor at his or her home, id. at 968, and we also noted that the majority of jurisdictions at that time were reluctant to impose liability on social hosts based on the basis of negligence principles alone, without the support of express legislative policy. Id. Reviewing the rationales employed by other jurisdictions in declining to impose such a duty, this Court likewise deferred to the Legislature, holding that [t]he imposition of liability upon social hosts for the torts of guests has such serious implications that any action taken should be taken by the Legislature after careful investigation, scrutiny, and debate. It is abundantly clear that greater legislative resources and the opportunity for broad public input would more readily enable the Legislature to fashion an appropriate remedy to deal with the scope and severity of this problem. Id. We further emphasized that [p]reventing the future loss of innocent lives because of intoxicated drivers requires both legislative and judicial action in a combined effort to win the war against the devastating consequences of drunk driving. The Legislature must set out the duties and responsibilities of various segments of our society within these social situations, and the courts must stringently enforce those duties and responsibilities. Id. at 970. Finding no duty owed to the plaintiffs by the defendant-hosts under the facts of that case, this Court affirmed the judgment of the Superior Court. [11] Id. Ten years later, in Martin v. Marciano, 871 A.2d 911 (R.I.2005), this Court was presented with another alcohol consumption/premises liability case, this time involving injury to the plaintiff-guest at the hands of an assailant who showed up at the home of a social host. [12] However, the factual circumstances in Martin extracted the case from the constraints instilled in Ferreira, because the defendant adult host provided alcohol to underage drinkers, including the injured plaintiff. Id. at 916. Noting that, although a landowner [generally] has no duty to protect another from harm caused by the dangerous or illegal acts of a third party[,]    [a]n exception to this rule exists, however, when a plaintiff and a defendant bear a special relationship to each other. Id. at 915 (citing Luoni v. Berube, 431 Mass. 729, 729 N.E.2d 1108, 1111 (2000)). Finding the facts of the case to give rise to a special relationship between the injured plaintiff and the defendant-host, we held that parent-hosts who provide alcohol to underage guests indeed have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect their guests from injury   . Id. at 916. This Court further distinguished the matter from Ferreira, reasoning that [t]he `serious implications' that counseled in favor of judicial restraint in Ferreira [were] noticeably absent and that on the contrary, existing public policy [13] favored burdening parent-hosts who provide alcohol to underage guests with [such] a duty. Martin, 871 A.2d at 916 (quoting Ferreira, 652 A.2d at 968). Although the defendant-host mounted a challenge based on a lack of foreseeability of the injury, this Court determined that in the context of [the] defendant's duty, it was generally foreseeable that one of her underage guests could have been the victim of an attack while attending the party. Id. at 917. Following our opinion in Martin, we were again petitioned to ponder a place for social-host liability within our jurisprudence in Willis. The negligence claim set forth by the injured plaintiff, Willis, arose from the alleged negligent service of alcohol by the defendant-hosts to Willis and her boyfriend, both of drinking age, while at the hosts' residence. Willis, 954 A.2d at 127-28. In Willis's view, this conduct led to the single-car collision later that evening in which she was injured as a passenger in her boyfriend's vehicle. Id. The defendant-hosts filed a successful motion for summary judgment premised on a lack-of-duty argument. Id. at 128-29. In granting the motion, the hearing justice emphasized that Rhode Island ha[d] not embraced social-host liability for drunk-driving casualties, in the absence of an accompanying special relationship. Id. at 129 (citing Ferreira, 652 A.2d at 967). In affirming the hearing justice's grant of summary judgment, we discerned no extant special relationshiprequisite to a finding of dutyupon review of the record. Willis, 954 A.2d at 130. Likening Willis's case to that in Ferreira, and distinguishing it from special relationship cases, such as Martin, this Court declined to overturn settled precedent by adopting the general social-host theory of liability in furtherance of creating a new cause of action. Willis, 954 A.2d at 130-31. As in Ferreira, we underscored in Willis that [t]he issue of liability vel non for social hosts whose guests cause harm is a matter that belongs in the Legislature. Willis, 954 A.2d at 131. In Willis, 954 A.2d at 129-30, this Court turned to its opinions in both Martin and in Volpe, in conducting the special relationship inquiry. Volpe, while not a social-host case, did focus on premises liability. Volpe, 821 A.2d at 705. In Volpe, the defendant homeowner was sued based on allegations that she negligently allowed her adult son, who was mentally ill, to store guns and ammunition on her property. Id. at 702. The son used one of the firearms to shoot and kill his next-door neighbor while the neighbor trimmed a hedge along the property boundary. Id. at 703. Although a jury returned a verdict deeming the defendant to have been negligent by allowing her mentally disturbed, paranoid, and delusional son to store firearms and ammunition on her property, the trial justice ultimately granted the defendant's motion for a new trial. Id. at 704. In so doing, the trial justice reasoned that she had mistakenly permitted the case to go to the jury because, in her view, the defendant owed no legal duty to the neighboring victim because she could not have foreseen that her son would use any of [the] firearms to murder himat least without any evidence of similar previous incidents or a violent history to signal her that he was capable of such an act. Id. Upon review, a majority of this Court reversed the trial justice's grant of the new-trial motion, holding that, based on the circumstances at hand, the defendant property owner did indeed have a duty to exercise reasonable care so to control [her son's] conduct    as to prevent him from intentionally harming others or from so conducting himself as to create an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to them[.] Volpe, 821 A.2d at 709 (quoting Restatement (Second) Torts § 318 at 126-27 (1965)). In arriving at this conclusion, this Court relied on both a landowner's traditional liability to visitors and to those outside the property for maintaining dangerous conditions on their land, id. at 706, as well as a land possessor's `duty to exercise reasonable care for the protection of others' that arises `between the possessor of land and those allowed on the land because of the possessor's power of control over those allowed to enter.' Id. (quoting Chavez v. Torres, 128 N.M. 171, 991 P.2d 1, 5 (Ct.App.1999)). The latter theory is based on the Restatement (Second) Torts § 318 at 126-27, entitled Duty of Possessor of Land or Chattels to Control Conduct of Licensee, and reads as follows: If the actor permits a third person to use land or chattels in his possession otherwise than as a servant, he is, if present, under a duty to exercise reasonable care so to control the conduct of the third person as to prevent him from intentionally harming others or from so conducting himself as to create an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to them, if the actor (a) knows or has reason to know that he has the ability to control the third person, and (b) knows or should know of the necessity and opportunity for exercising such control. In adopting this theory of liability, we emphasized in Volpe that such a duty is conditional and does not create strict liability for those possessors of property who permit third parties to conduct an activity on their property that creates an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to others   . Volpe, 821 A.2d at 706. Determining that the defendant in Volpe met these conditions, we held that a special relationship indeed existed between the defendant and her neighbor that imposed upon the defendant a duty to control the conduct of her adult son. [14] , [15] See id. at 709. This Court next confronted the special-relationship question in Santana v. Rainbow Cleaners, Inc., 969 A.2d 653 (R.I. 2009), in which an injured plaintiff sued a mental health center, alleging that the center was negligent by not seeking to commit the mentally-disturbed patient who struck her with a crowbar. Id. at 654-55. The plaintiff maintained that the center was liable because it knew or should have known that [the patient] was an individual whose continued unsupervised presence in the community would create an imminent likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental disability   . Id. at 656. Arguing that it had no duty to exercise control over the patient to prevent him from committing an act of violence, the center successfully moved for summary judgment in the Superior Court. Id. at 656-57. On appeal, this Court stated that, although [t]here is ordinarily no duty to control a third party's conduct to prevent harm to another individual[,] [t]he law    has recognized an exception to this general rule when a defendant has a special relationship with either the person whose conduct needs to be controlled or with the intended victim of the conduct. Santana, 969 A.2d at 658. We noted that this exception is reflected in the Restatement (Second) Torts § 315 at 122, which states that There is no duty so to control the conduct of a third person as to prevent him from causing physical harm to another unless (a) a special relation exists between the actor and the third person which imposes a duty upon the actor to control the third person's conduct, or (b) a special relation exists between the actor and the other which gives to the other a right to protection. Gleaning no evidence from the record that would show that the center had the ability or opportunity to control the patient, we concluded that no special relationship between the two existed based on the facts before us. Santana, 969 A.2d at 655-56. Citing the lack of special relationship, in conjunction with foreseeability and public policy concerns, this Court found no duty on the part of the center and affirmed the grant of summary judgment. Id. at 666-67. The foregoing authority illustrates the fact-specific and intricate scrutiny this Court must apply when encountered with cases involving a defendant's alleged failure to control the tortious conduct of a third party, particularly when the consumption of alcohol is involved. The matter presently before us poses a factual pattern that reflects certain circumstances and concerns considered in our prior social-host and special-relationship opinions in an almost hybrid fashion. In light of this, the parties rely on both types of cases to support their respective causes. Notably absent from this case, however, is the fundamental theme of premises liability present in cases like Martin and Volpe. Nevertheless, amid the fog of theories and principles proffered by the parties in this appeal, what is clear is that the finding of a duty in this case rests largely upon whether a special relationship existed between Mr. Clukey and Mr. Milner, between Mr. Clukey and Mr. Johnson, or neither at all.