Opinion ID: 2274434
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Whether the Society owed a Duty of Care to Plaintiffs

Text: To prevail on a claim of negligence, it is incumbent upon Simcha to establish that the Society owed him a legal duty, the Society breached that duty of care, and he suffered injury as a result. See Haley v. Town of Lincoln, 611 A.2d 845, 848 (R.I.1992) (noting that a prima facie case of negligence requires proof of a legal duty owed by defendant, the breach of which serves as the basis of liability). The record demonstrates that the Cliff Walk is a public easement over private land; a number of private individuals and entities including the Society and Salve Regina own the land along which the Cliff Walk runs. It is a well established legal principle in this jurisdiction, as well as others, that a landowner whose property abuts a public way has no duty to repair or maintain it. Typically, courts will not impose liability for injuries that occur on land over which the owner has no control, and significantly, no duty to repair. Whether a duty exists in a particular situation is a question of law to be decided by the court. Ferreira, 636 A.2d at 685. It is our opinion that because the Society has no control over the public easement, it has no responsibility to those who come upon it. Our decision in Ferreira is instructive; the tragic events in that case occurred on Christmas Eve in 1986, when three church parishioners, returning to their car after Midnight Mass, crossed Broadway, a public street in Newport, to travel from the church to a small parking lot owned by a third party. Ferreira, 636 A.2d at 684. While crossing the street, two of the worshipers were struck by a drunk driver; one parishioner suffered severe injuries and the other died. Id. The plaintiffs sued the church, but this Court rejected the contention that the church was responsible for their injuries. Id. at 686. We noted that the protection of the public while on a public way is a duty allocated to the government, not to private individuals who own land abutting public ways. Id. The plaintiffs additionally argued that, because the church knew that its worshipers customarily crossed the public way to attend services, injuries such as the ones suffered by the plaintiffs were foreseeable. Id. at 688. We declared, however, that because a landowner neither owns nor controls a public way, the church could not be liable for failing to prevent the injury, even if such injury was foreseeable. Id. (noting that Rhode Island law consistently recognizes that the foreseeability of an injury does not impose a duty); see also Cornell v. Jan Co. Central Inc., 671 A.2d 1223, 1224-25 (R.I.1996) (holding that an abutting corporate landowner did not have a duty to control or manage traffic on an abutting public way). Other jurisdictions are in accord. Recently, the North Dakota Supreme Court declined to hold a landowner responsible for injuries occurring on a public way that ran through his property. Kappenman v. Klipfel 765 N.W.2d 716, 728 (N.D.2009). A thirteen-year-old boy died when his all-terrain vehicle fell into a trench that crossed a town section line, [10] which ran through private property. Id. at 718. The defendant owned land on both sides of the line. Id. at 719. The court stated that [a]lthough the landowner abutting a section line continues to own the land subject to the easement    [he] does not owe to the public a duty to keep the [easement] in a safe condition. Id. at 728. Additionally, the New York Court of Appeals rejected an argument that a baseball stadium was liable for injuries that a fourteen-year-old boy suffered after a drunk driver struck him while he was chasing a foul ball into the public street adjacent to the stadium. Haymon v. Pettit, 9 N.Y.3d 324, 849 N.Y.S.2d 872, 880 N.E.2d 416, 417 (2007). The stadium sponsored an incentive program in which members of the public who gathered outside the building would receive free tickets in exchange for retrieving and returning foul balls. Id. The plaintiff argued that since this type of an injury was a consequence of the stadium's incentive program, it owed the public a duty of protection. Id. The court held that the plaintiff's argument presupposed that a duty existed, but the court declined to impose such a duty because the stadium could control neither the public street nor third persons who use it. Id. 849 N.Y.S.2d 872, 880 N.E.2d at 418; see also Lacey v. Bekaert Steel Wire Corp., 799 F.2d 434, 437 (8th Cir.1986) (observing that, under Arkansas law, the defendant who owned property under and adjacent to the public highway did not owe a duty to travelers); Davis v. Westwood Group, 420 Mass. 739, 652 N.E.2d 567, 571 (1995) (noting that the state's control over the public way undermined the plaintiff's attempt to impose liability on the abutting private landowner). It is not the function of this Court to declare a duty when none exists. Although the Society owns the land over and along which the public easement runs, it has no control over the Cliff Walk; it cannot restrict or limit access to the easement by the hordes of tourists who visit it each year. The law in this state, as well as in other jurisdictions, is clear: a public easement is the responsibility of the governmental agency that undertakes the control and maintenance of the easement. Whether a private abutter owns the land running under the easement is of no moment; nor does it matter that the risk of injury from the easement's use is foreseeable. We are of the opinion that landowners whose property abuts the Cliff Walk, including the Society, do not have a duty of care to maintain the easement. These landowners have no duty to warn, construct fences, or take any other precautions concerning the attraction's dangers. Because there is no duty owed by the Society, we affirm the grant of summary judgment, but we do so on grounds other than those relied upon by the trial justice. See Lynch, 770 A.2d at 847.