Opinion ID: 2321637
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Trial Judge Correctly Focused On the Relationship Between Mrs. Riedel and ICI

Text: We review a trial judge's grant of summary judgment de novo to determine whether, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, the moving party has demonstrated that there are no material issues of fact in dispute and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. [2] To prevail in her negligence action against ICI, Mrs. Riedel needed to establish that: ICI owed her a duty of care; ICI breached that duty; and ICI's breach proximately caused Mrs. Riedel's injury. [3] Whether ICI owed Mrs. Riedel a legal duty is a question of law for the Court to determine. [4] Generally, to determine whether one party owed another a duty of care, we follow the guidance of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. [5] On the eve of oral argument before this Court, the Tennessee Supreme Court decided Satterfield v. Breeding Insulation Co. [6] In Satterfield, the court relied on certain sections and definitions from the latest draft of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical Harm. [7] Following oral argument, we asked the parties for supplemental briefs regarding whether this Court should adopt several sections of the Restatement (Third) of Torts and if so, how to apply those sections to the case at bar. [8] At this time, we decline to adopt any sections of the Restatement (Third) of Torts. The drafters of the Restatement (Third) of Torts redefined the concept of duty in a way that is inconsistent with this Court's precedents and traditions. The Restatement (Third) of Torts creates duties in areas where we have previously found no common law duty and have deferred to the legislature to decide whether or not to create a duty. For example, under the Restatement (Third) of Torts, tavern owners and social hosts would owe a duty to third parties injured when they negligently provided alcohol to a patron or guest. As we recently stated in Shea v. Matassa: This Court, in an unbroken line of cases over the past twenty-five years, has determined that the establishment of a Dram Shop cause of action presents a social policy issue for the legislature, not the Court. [9] Given our history of deferring to the General Assembly's apparent distaste for a Dram Shop act, [10] it would be incongruous for this Court now to adopt the Restatement (Third) of Torts, thereby creating a common law duty that directly contravenes the primacy of the legislative branch in resolving this question. We find no consolation in § 7(b) of the Restatement (Third) of Torts, which allows courts to decide that an articulated countervailing principle of policy warrants denying or limiting liability in a particular class of cases and to decree that the defendant has no duty or that the ordinary duty of reasonable care requires modification. [11] As we explained in the context of Dram Shop liability, the General Assembly decides these matters of social policy, not the courts. This Court's charge does not include articulating general social norms of responsibility. [12] Whether the expansive approach for creating duties found in the Restatement (Third) of Torts is viewed as a step forward or backward in assisting courts to apply the common law of negligence, it is simply too wide a leap for this Court to take. Therefore, at the present time we continue to follow the Restatement (Second) of Torts. Section 4 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts defines duty as follows: The word duty is used throughout the Restatement of this Subject to denote the fact that the actor is required to conduct himself in a particular manner at the risk that if he does not do so he becomes subject to liability to another to whom the duty is owed for any injury sustained by such other, of which that actor's conduct is a legal cause. The concept of duty most frequently arises in the Restatement's sections addressing negligence. [13] Comment (b) further explains that duty is useful both in describing the requirement that action shall be taken for the protection of the interests of others and to describe the requirement that the actor, if he acts at all, must exercise reasonable care to make his acts safe for others. Section 282 of the (Second) Restatement defines negligence as conduct which falls below the standard established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm, not including conduct recklessly disregardful of an interest of others. According to § 284: Negligent conduct may be either: (a) an act which the actor as a reasonable man should recognize as involving an unreasonable risk of causing an invasion of an interest of another, or (b) a failure to do an act which is necessary for the protection or assistance of another and which the actor is under a duty to do. Section 302 further explains that: A negligent act or omission may be one which involves an unreasonable risk of harm to another through either (a) the continuous operation of a force started or continued by the act or omission, or (b) the foreseeable action of the other, a third person, an animal, or a force of nature. Although Comment (a) to § 302 notes that § 302 is concerned only with the negligent character of the actor's conduct, and not with his duty to avoid the unreasonable risk[,] the comment proceeds to explain the dissimilar duties owed by one who merely omits to act versus one who does an affirmative act. As Comment (a) explains, anyone who does an affirmative act is under a duty to others to exercise the care of a reasonable man to protect them against an unreasonable risk of harm to them arising out of the act. On the other hand, one who merely omits to act generally has no duty to act, unless there is a special relation between the actor and the other which gives rise to the duty. [14] Comment (a) to § 302 refers to § 314 for further discussion about the distinction between act and omission, or `misfeasance' and `non-feasance.' Section 314 outlines the general rule that, [t]he fact that the actor realizes or should realize that action on his part is necessary for another's aid or protection does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action. Comment (a) to Section 314 notes, however, that Sections 314A [15] and 316 through 324A [16] provide exceptions to this general rule. Comment (c) to § 314 explains the origin and development of the requirement of a special relationship between the parties to establish liability for nonfeasance: The origin of the rule lay in the early common law distinction between action and inaction, or misfeasance and nonfeasance. In the early law one who injured another by a positive affirmative act was held liable without any great regard even for his fault. But the courts were far too much occupied with the more flagrant forms of misbehavior to be greatly concerned with one who merely did nothing, even though another might suffer serious harm because of his omission to act. Hence liability for nonfeasance was slow to receive any recognition in the law. It appeared first in, and is still largely confined to, situations in which there was some special relation between the parties, on the basis of which the defendant was found to have a duty to take action for the aid or protection of the plaintiff. The (Second) Restatement does not provide any further guidance, beyond the sections discussed above, for determining whether a claim is one of misfeasance or nonfeasance. Although the trial judge did not explicitly address whether Mrs. Riedel alleged misfeasance or nonfeasance, he considered Mrs. Riedel's claim in a manner consistent with the (Second) Restatement's analysis of nonfeasance. Finding no legally significant special relationship between Mrs. Riedel and ICI, the trial judge determined that ICI owed no duty to Mrs. Riedel. Although the trial judge's analysis strayed from the guidance of the (Second) Restatement, our review of the record leads us to agree with the trial judge's conclusion. It is important to note that Mrs. Riedel presented significantly different theories of negligence to the trial judge and to this Court. At trial, Mrs. Riedel characterized ICI's alleged negligence as a failure either to prevent Mr. Riedel from taking asbestos home or to warn the Riedels of the dangers associated with Mr. Riedel wearing his work clothes home from the workplace. That is, to the trial judge Mrs. Riedel presented a theory of nonfeasance. Now, however, she claims that ICI's affirmative release of asbestos into the environment constitutes misfeasance. To us, Mrs. Riedel claims that [t]here is simply no principled way to distinguish ICI's asbestos release on its employee's clothes with another entity's release of a deadly toxin via another vector such as the air. She asserts that ICI did nothing less than actively release asbestos toxins out of its plant and into Mrs. Riedel's home. At oral argument, Mrs. Riedel's counsel stated: ICI by its affirmative act of releasing toxic asbestos into the environment outside its plant became subject to a duty to all foreseeable victims of harm caused by its misfeasance. Here, the vehicle of transmission of the toxic asbestos to the Riedel home was the clothes of her husband, a totally innocent party. This form of transmission is no different legally than if the asbestos was improperly released into the environment by ICI and transmitted by the wind to the Riedel home ... or was dropped, dumped into a stream on ICI's property and then flowed to the Riedel family well. Mrs. Riedel presented a vastly different theory of negligence to the trial judge. Contrary to her claim that there is no principled way to distinguish ICI's asbestos release on its employee's clothes with another entity's release of a deadly toxin via another vector such as the air, she made precisely that distinction in her complaint and at the summary judgment oral argument. In Count I of her complaint, she claimed: neighborhood exposure by living in close proximity of the Haveg plant from approximately 1971 through the end of the 1970's. At the summary judgment oral argument, Mrs. Riedel's counsel compared the case at bar with another case with which the trial judge was apparently familiar: When your Honor mentioned in terms of pollution, I mean we had this exact case, if your Honor will recall, the Ward case where you heard it as a mesothelioma case. We had two claims just as we do in Riedel. Mrs. Riedel has a claim because she was next to the Haveg facility, for environmental claim, and her husband worked at ICI, household claim. At trial, Mrs. Riedel clearly distinguished her claim against ICI from her claims for environmental asbestos exposure. Mrs. Riedel's trial strategy also contradicts her assertion on appeal that Mr. Riedel is a totally innocent party. In her motion for reargument, Mrs. Riedel argued not that ICI acted affirmatively but rather that ICI was vicariously responsible for Mr. Riedel's negligence. Mrs. Riedel asserted that the principal, ICI, should be liable for the acts of its agent, Mr. Riedel. At the summary judgment oral argument, Mrs. Riedel's counsel stated: So from a standpoint in terms of legal relationship and duty, I look at as, first of all, and I mean there's no dispute in the facts here, they didn't argue that, is that Mr. Riedel was exposed to asbestos as an employee doing his work at ICI and yet they were negligent in terms of how they did that. Didn't warn him, allowed it to be used. Furthermore, they were negligent in that they didn't take steps to prevent the contamination of his household because of his work and I mean in terms ofI think it really goes down to foreseeability. I mean in terms of duty, I think to try to say legal relationship, there is a legal relationship. It's called husband and wife. We conclude that, although Mrs. Riedel may have presented a theory of misfeasance in characterizing Mr. Riedel's claim, she presented a nonfeasance theory in characterizing her own. At the summary judgment oral argument, Mrs. Riedel's counsel told the trial judge that I think the narrative case you should look at is what if the patient, crazy husbandand the psychiatrist should have realized it was a riskstrangles his wife? That's almost more foreseeable in terms ofthan a stranger in terms of the motorist. This narrative case is a variation of Naidu v. Laird , where a widow brought a negligence action against a psychiatrist alleging that the psychiatrist acted with gross negligence by releasing a mental patient who later killed the widow's husband while driving an automobile in a psychotic state. [17] In Naidu, we rejected the psychiatrist's argument that he owed no duty to the injured motorist. [18] We explained: Generally, there is no duty to control the conduct of a third person to prevent him from causing 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. [19] In accordance with the California Supreme Court's holding in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, [20] we recognized the existence of a special relationship between a psychotherapist and a patient which provides the underlying basis for imposition of an affirmative duty owed to persons other than the patient. [21] Our holding in Naidu is entirely consistent with the (Second) Restatement's requirement of a legally significant relationship in negligence actions grounded in nonfeasance. In the altered version of Naidu that Mrs. Riedel's counsel presented as the narrative case, the negligently released patient goes home and strangles his wife, rather than causing an automobile accident with a stranger. This narrative case clearly demonstrates that Mrs. Riedel presented a nonfeasance theory of negligence to the trial judge. Mrs. Riedel viewed ICI's negligence as a failure to control its employees. In her motion for reargument, Mrs. Riedel stated that the harm was caused by [ICI] because it was negligent in training, supervising, and controlling [Mr. Riedel.] Given the foregoing, we are not persuaded by Mrs. Riedel's assertion that she pled misfeasance in Count II of her complaint. Referring to ICI, Count II states: Her husband's employers controlled the safety and working conditions and/or promoted the use of asbestos, at the sites where the plaintiff's husband worked, including the use, installation, and removal of asbestos and asbestos-containing products. This allegation merely supports Mrs. Riedel's theory at trial that ICI acted with misfeasance in relation to Mr. Riedel (by exposing him to asbestos) and with nonfeasance in relation to Mrs. Riedel (by failing to control Mr. Riedel.) Because Mrs. Riedel did not fairly present her current theory of misfeasance to the trial judge, Supreme Court Rule 8 precludes her from arguing to us that the trial judge erred by focusing on her lack of a legally significant relationship with ICI. [22] We adhere to the well settled rule which precludes a party from attacking a judgment on a theory which was not advanced in the court below. [23]