Opinion ID: 858083
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Wisconsin Law of Professional Negligence

Text: In Wisconsin a claim of negligence has four elements: (1) the existence of a duty of care on the part of the defendant; (2) a breach of that duty of care; (3) a causal connection between the defendant’s breach of the duty of care and the plaintiff’s injury; and (4) actual loss or damage resulting from the injury. Hornback v. Archdiocese of Milwaukee, 752 N.W.2d 862, 867 (Wis. 2008). On the question of duty, Wisconsin follows Judge Andrews’s dissent in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928), see, e.g., Behrendt v. Gulf Underwriters Ins. Co., 768 N.W.2d 568 (Wis. 2009), distilled succinctly as the principle that “[e]very one owes to the world at large the duty of refraining from those acts that may unreasonably threaten the safety of others,” Palsgraf, 162 N.E. at 103 (Andrews, J., dissenting). The duty of care in Wisconsin negligence law is simply stated as the duty to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. That standard is inherently quite abstract and must be defined more specifically for any given case. See Hoida, Inc. v. M & I Midstate Bank, 717 N.W.2d 17, 29 (Wis. 2006) (the scope of that duty of care “depends on the circumstances under which the claimed duty arises” and “may depend on the relationship between the parties or on whether the alleged tortfeasor assumed a special role in regard to the injured party”). Where the specifics of a defendant’s duty of care involve specialized knowledge, plaintiffs must introduce expert testimony to establish this element of a negligence claim. Payne v. Milwaukee Sanitarium Found., Inc., 12 No. 11-3061 260 N.W.2d 386, 392 (Wis. 1977) (“Expert testimony should be adduced concerning those matters involving special knowledge or skill or experience on subjects which are not within the realm of the ordinary experience of mankind, and which require special learning, study or experience.”). Premises-security cases like this one fall within the category of negligence claims requiring expert testimony. See Shadday v. Omni Hotels Mgmt. Corp., 477 F.3d 511, 515 (7th Cir. 2007) (“It is one thing for a jury unaided by expert testimony . . . to assess the care with which the defendant in an automobile accident case drove, for that is something with which almost all jurors are familiar; it is another thing for a jury to determine the right standard of care to which to hold a hotel.”); Varner v. District of Columbia, 891 A.2d 260, 267 (D.C. 2006) (“[E]xpert testimony is required to establish the standard of care in negligence cases . . . which involve issues of safety, security[,] and crime prevention.”). The parties agree that Lees needs expert testimony to prove her claim, but they disagree about exactly what this testimony must show. Dr. Kennedy’s affidavits are mostly framed in terms of foreseeability: Given the inadequate security measures and history of sexual assault at Carthage, Lees’s rape was foreseeable, so Carthage failed to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. While the district court ultimately rejected Dr. Kennedy’s testimony, it seemed to accept that foreseeability was the relevant question. The court cited Gritzner v. Michael R., 611 N.W.2d 906, 912 (Wis. 2000), for the proposition that duty of care is established No. 11-3061 13 “whenever it was foreseeable to the defendant that his or her act or omission to act might cause harm to some other person.” Under more recent Wisconsin caselaw, however, foreseeability relates to the question of breach, not a question of the duty of care. See Behrendt, 768 N.W.2d at 575-76 (“ ‘A lack of foreseeable risk in a specific case may be a basis for a no-breach determination, but such a ruling is not a no-duty determina- tion. Rather it is a determination that no reasonable person could find that the defendant has breached the duty of reasonable care.’ ” (quoting R ESTATEMENT (T HIRD ) OF T ORTS: L IABILITY FOR P HYSICAL H ARMS § 7(a) cmt. j (Proposed Final Draft No. 1, 2005))). Accordingly, foreseeability is not the relevant focus of inquiry for determining the admissibility of expert testimony in a case like this one. Rather, expert testimony is required to establish the standard of care for ensuring the security of a campus residential environment. Colleges must provide students with a safe living environment as part of their generalized duty of care, but what are the contours of that duty in a given case? More specifically, what security measures must a particular college undertake to provide a level of safety that is reasonable under the circumstances? That question—what specific actions did Carthage need to take to meet its generalized duty of care—is what the term “standard of care” addresses in this context, and that is the question the expert’s testimony must address. In a sense, in this context the standard of care is a fusion of the elements of duty and breach: The security measures that were reasonable under the circumstances make up 14 No. 11-3061 the duty of care, and to the extent that Carthage’s actions fell below this standard, it breached that duty. The foreseeability of particular kinds of harms may inform this analysis, but foreseeability itself is not the ultimate issue for the jury as it may be in ordinary negligence cases. To see how this concept operates in practice, consider how professional negligence is addressed in the more familiar realm of medical malpractice. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has approved the following language for instructing juries on medical negligence, which closely tracks Wisconsin Civil Jury Instruction No. 1023: In treating [patient], [doctor] was required to use the degree of care, skill, and judgment which is usually exercised in the same or similar circum- stances by the average specialist who practices the specialty which [doctor] practices, having due regard for the state of medical science at the time [patient] was treated. The burden in this case is on the plaintiffs to prove that [doctor] failed to conform to this standard. A physician does not guarantee the results of his care and treatment. A physician must use reasonable care and is not liable for failing to use the highest degree of care, skill, and judgment. [Doctor] cannot be found negligent simply because there was a bad result. Medicine is not an exact science. Therefore, the issue you must decide in determining whether [doctor] was negligent is not whether there was a bad result but whether he failed to use the degree of care, skill, and judgment which is exercised by No. 11-3061 15 the average physician practicing the [doctor’s subspecialty]. If you find that more than one method of treatment for [patient]’s injuries is recognized, then [doctor] was at liberty to select any of the recognized methods. [Doctor] was not negligent merely because he made a choice of a recognized alternative method of treatment if he used the required care, skill, and judgment in administering the method. This is true even though other medical witnesses may not agree with him on the choice that was made. Nowatske v. Osterloh, 543 N.W.2d 265, 269 (Wis. 1996), abrogated on other grounds by Nommensen v. Am. Cont’l Ins. Co., 629 N.W.2d 301, 313 n.6 (Wis. 2001). Extrapolating to the premises-security claim in this case, the pivotal question is whether Carthage used the degree of care and judgment usually exercised by the average college under similar circumstances, having due regard for the contemporary state of campus-security practices. Where multiple approaches to premises security are recognized as adequate, colleges are free to choose among them. A college breaches its duty of care when it fails to conform to this standard.