Opinion ID: 2622540
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Superior Court Properly Denied Lynden's Motion for Summary Judgment.

Text: In its motion for summary judgment, Lynden argued that it had no duty to Walker, and that Walker had therefore failed to establish a viable cause of action. It repeats this argument on appeal. The existence of a duty turns not on the particularized facts of a given case, but rather on the basic nature of the relationship between the parties to the cause of action. [9] While the question whether a duty exists may be susceptible to summary judgment, questions about the scope of a duty and whether the duty was breached are normally not susceptible to summary judgment, particularly so when the scope of the duty poses a fact-specific question, involving policy and `circumstantial judgments' that our legal system reserves for the jury. [10] The trial court denied Lynden's motion for summary judgment, basing its conclusion in part on §§ 391, 392 and 393 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. These sections impose a duty of care on suppliers who supply chattels to others for the suppliers' business purposes when the suppliers know or have reason to know that the chattels are likely to be dangerous for intended uses. Lynden argues that it did not supply chattels (pipe saddles) for its business purposes and so these sections do not apply. Comment d of § 392 of the Restatement addresses the question of what uses are for a supplier's business purposes. [11] Exactly what is meant by this phrase is not completely clear. But we are told that the fact that [a chattel] is being used for the purpose of completing a contract or business dealing as undertaken by the supplier is often important. [12] As an example the comment states that a railroad having a contract to deliver goods may be liable for the unloading of a railcar by its customer's employees at its customer's plant: This is true because the contract to deliver involves the unloading of the car, and also involves such movements of the car in the private yards of the manufacturing company as are necessary to place it in a position convenient for unloading. [13] Lynden's contractual responsibility in this case was to load equipment onto a truck owned by H.C. Price, not to deliver materials. Lynden's contractual duties were completed once Lynden loaded the requested equipment. Thus, based on comment d to § 392, it seems doubtful that the pipe saddles met the supplier's business purposes requirement at the time Walker was injured. Although the trial court may have erred in finding a duty based on §§ 391-393 of the Restatement, other jurisdictions have found a duty to load materials so that they can be safely unloaded independent of the Restatement's requirements. [14] In Jablonowski v. United States , a man unloading crates from a boxcar was severely injured when a column of crates fell on top of him. [15] In upholding a jury verdict against the United States, which had loaded the crates, the court permitted recovery on the theory that a consignor has a duty to a consignee to load freight on a railroad car properly. [16] In Wintersteen v. National Cooperage and Woodenware Co., the Illinois Supreme Court upheld a jury verdict against a shipper when the unloader of the improperly loaded railroad car was injured by barrels falling out of the car door. [17] Rejecting the shipper's contention that it had no duty of care to the unloader, the court wrote that [i]t is axiomatic that every person owes a duty to all persons to exercise ordinary care to guard against any injury which may naturally flow as a reasonably probable and foreseeable consequence of his act .... [18] As Wintersteen indicates, generally an actor, if he acts at all, must exercise reasonable care to make his acts safe for others. [19] In this sense there is a general duty of care running to all who might foreseeably be injured by an actor's conduct. But duty takes on a special relevance where the question is whether the actor must take affirmative action, or where there are special policy reasons for not imposing tort liability. [20] Here, the defendant acted, so the question is whether this case falls within the latter category; that is, are there reasons of policy for not imposing tort liability on this type of negligent action? As the following review of our case law indicates, such cases are unusual, [21] and this is not one of them. In D.S.W. v. Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, we considered whether a public school had a duty of care to discover and assist in overcoming a child's learning disability. [22] In holding that the school had no such duty, we outlined seven factors a court should consider when determining whether duty attaches to or demands particular conduct. [23] We derived our test from Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District, in which the California Court of Appeals addressed a similar question, and articulated factors to inform the public policy inquiry into whether a duty should attach. [24] Those factors are: 1. The foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, 2. The degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, 3. The closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered, 4. The moral blame attached to the defendant's conduct, 5. The policy of preventing future harm, 6. The extent of the burden to the defendant and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach, and 7. The availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved. [25] In finding no duty in D.S.W. we stressed the uncertainty inherent in determining educational injury and its cause. [26] Other cases in which we have found no duty based on a review of the D.S.W. factors include:  Mesiar v. Heckman. [27] Here we held that the state did not have a duty to fishermen to collect fish population data in a nonnegligent manner. Despite the foreseeability of economic injury to fisherman if data was improperly collected, we found that the following factors argued against imposing a duty: lack of moral blameworthiness associated with negligent conduct which creates a risk of economic harm, as distinct from a risk of personal injury or death; the possibility that imposing a duty would prompt the state to manage to heed the loudest threats rather than rely on sound principles of resource management for the benefit of all Alaskans; and the severe burden a duty would impose on the public, opening the door to endless damage claims by unlimited groups of resource users. [28]  Kooly v. State [29] and Schumacher v. City and Borough of Yakutat. [30] In these cases we addressed the question whether the state and local governments had a duty to make streets and rights-of-way safe for sledding. In determining that no such duty exists, we stressed the burden imposing such a duty would have on the community: [31] Given the varied terrain in Alaska, it is not possible to make the thousands of miles of state rights-of-way adjacent to highways safe for sledding. Any effort to do so would be both expensive and futile. Imposing such a duty would simply inflict heavy damage judgments on the State with little or no corresponding increase in public safety. [32]  Hawks v. State, Department of Public Safety. [33] This case involved a claim of negligent infliction of emotional distress by a murder victim's mother against the state police for negligent failure to identify the victim's remains. We found that the lack of moral blameworthiness for the police negligence and the burden on the community from permitting such claims weighed heavily against finding a duty. [34]  Adkinson v. Rossi Arms Company. [35] Adkinson was convicted of manslaughter for the intentional killing of a third party. He sued the manufacturer of the gun used in the killing for damages including emotional distress and economic losses, alleging that it was defective and discharged accidentally, causing his conviction and imprisonment. We found that no duty ran from the manufacturer to Adkinson, emphasizing that public policy considerations argued against allowing one convicted of an intentional crime from shifting the consequences of the conviction to a third party and ultimately to the public. [36] Imposing liability for breach of a duty to load chattels in such manner that they may be safely unloaded has little in common with the foregoing cases. Unlike D.S.W., Mesiar, Hawks, and, in part, Adkinson, the injury suffered as a consequence of violation of such a duty is personal injury, not emotional distress or economic loss. [37] No plausible floodgate of litigation argument can be made. Moreover, recognition of a duty does not conflict with or threaten the implementation of other recognized policies, as was the case in Mesiar (sound natural resource management for the general benefit) and Adkinson (sound corrections policy). Instead, analysis of the D.S.W. factors weighs in favor of imposing a duty to load materials in a manner so that they can be safely unloaded, and reveals no reason not to conclude that such a duty exists. It is readily foreseeable that if materials are loaded in a way such that they cannot be safely unloaded, people assigned to unload the materials might be injured. Lynden argues that Walker's injury was not foreseeable, and that it was therefore not proper to find it had an actionable duty to Walker. However, the fact-specific foreseeability to which Lynden refers goes to causation and negligence, rather than to the existence of a duty. [38] There is ample evidence the plaintiff suffered injury, indeed an obvious personal injury. The closeness of the connection between Lynden's conduct and the injury suffered by plaintiff is an issue of some dispute. Lynden argues that there is very little connection between its conduct and plaintiff's injury, pointing out that it had no knowledge or control over where or how Walker attempted to unload the pipe saddles. However, Walker presented evidence at trial showing that loading pipe saddles without pallets was unreasonably dangerous, and that the absence of pallets caused him to attempt to unload the saddles by hand. This is also a fact-specific controversy relevant to the question of negligence and causation. For purposes of the D.S.W. inquiry, it is enough to observe that if a product is loaded in a way that it cannot be safely unloaded there generally will be a close connection between the act of loading and injuries suffered while unloading. As to moral blame, negligence resulting in a risk of personal injury is regarded as significantly blameworthy in ways that negligence resulting only in emotional distress or economic loss is not. [39] The risk in cases of this nature is personal injury. The policy of preventing future harm is served by imposing on suppliers a duty to exercise reasonable care when loading material to ensure the material may be safely unloaded. Lynden argues that permitting liability in this case would be tantamount to a legal finding of a duty to band pipe saddles to pallets. Lynden mischaracterizes the duty, however. Whether reasonable care required banding the saddles to pallets in Lynden's case was a factual determination that was for the jury to make. [40] Imposing a duty of reasonable care on Lynden in the circumstances of this case would not unduly burden the community. Our law generally allows those who suffer personal injury caused by the negligent acts of others to shift their losses to the negligent actors. Permitting litigation having a loss-shifting objective in cases of this nature does not threaten to flood the courts with numerous cases of a heretofore unrecognized type. Nor is there the possibility that recognizing a duty to safely load will conflict with the achievement of other important social policies. Last, there is no evidence in the record regarding the availability of insurance for the risk involved, but it is reasonable to assume that a party like Lynden is able to purchase liability insurance to cover risks like that involved here. In sum, the D.S.W. factors support the trial court's finding that Lynden had a duty of care to load materials in a way that permitted them to be safely unloaded. What the duty of care required under the circumstances, and whether Lynden breached that duty, were questions properly presented to the trial jury. [41]
Lynden argues that it was entitled to summary judgment because there was no factual dispute as to whether the pipe saddles could be safely unloaded. However, one of the central factual disputes in the case was whether the pipe saddles could be safely unloaded. Some evidence shows the pipe saddles could have been safely unloaded, but there was also contrary evidence, and thus a factual dispute. Because the trial court correctly found that Lynden had a duty of care, and because there was a factual dispute as to whether the pipe saddles could have been safely unloaded, the trial court's denial of summary judgment is affirmed. For the same reasons, the trial court's denial of JNOV must also be affirmed.