Opinion ID: 2058115
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Ronald Rotondo d/b/a A Cut Above Landscaping Service

Text: The plaintiff also argues that the trial justice erred by granting Rotondo's Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law. The plaintiff contends that Rotondo, an agent of an undisclosed principal, may be liable for negligence, regardless of whether the principal is immune from liability. The plaintiff also argues that expert testimony was not required to establish a breach of the standard of care by virtue of overgrown grass in the vicinity of the drains because this is a matter of common knowledge and understanding by the average juror. The trial justice granted Rotondo's motion for judgment as a matter of law and held that there was no evidence presented demonstrating Rotondo's negligence, nor was there any testimony about the standard of care that Rotondo owed to plaintiff. We agree. [12] The plaintiff has not established that Rotondo failed in his lawn maintenance responsibilities nor that any failure by him was the proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries. In a negligence case, a plaintiff must establish a standard of care as well as a deviation from that standard. Sousa v. Chaset, 519 A.2d 1132, 1135 (R.I. 1987) (quoting Marshall v. Tomaselli, 118 R.I. 190, 196, 372 A.2d 1280, 1283 (1977)). Although plaintiff contends that a jury could use common sense and ordinary knowledge to find that Rotondo was negligent and argues that expert testimony is not always required in a negligence action, there must be evidence of a breach of a legal duty and evidence that the breach proximately caused plaintiff's harm. At trial, plaintiff failed to produce any evidence tending to show Rotondo's negligence. Without evidence of a specific act or omission by Rotondo that indicated a deviation from the proper standard of care, the plaintiff cannot prove negligence. In Morrocco v. Piccardi, 713 A.2d 250, 253 (R.I.1998), this Court upheld a jury's verdict awarding a homeowner damages against a contractor for failure to properly grade the landscaping on the property so that water would drain away from the house. As a result of the defendant's failure to properly grade the area, plaintiff slipped and fell on accumulated ice, sustaining a serious injury. At trial, plaintiff presented a professional landscaper as an expert witness who testified that it was a deviation from the standard of care to pitch the landscaping toward a house. Id. at 252. Additionally, the plaintiff engaged a consulting engineer who testified that the property did not conform to customary and established local landscaping and construction standards. Id. In his testimony, Rotondo indicated that he was hired by Johnston to cut the grass weekly during the summer and twice a week during the athletic season, when school was in session. Rotondo also testified that part of his job was to trim the grass around the drains; he acknowledged that this grass may have grown faster than the grass on the rest of the field because of the abundance of water in the area. There was no evidence presented that he did not cut the grass in accordance with the terms of his contract. The plaintiff cites a number of cases [13] to support her contention that expert testimony was not necessary to establish that the grass was overgrown near the drain. She contends that this is an area of common knowledge and understanding. According to plaintiff, the jury heard this evidence, had common knowledge about grass growth, and was presented with several photographs showing the grate covered with grass. This evidence, plaintiff alleges, was sufficient to allow a jury to determine whether or not the amount of growth that had accumulated [on the date of the incident] was inconsistent with a properly trimmed drain area just two days earlier. However, there are fundamental differences between the cases cited by plaintiff and the issue with which the Court is confronted. Most of the cases that plaintiff relies on address the improper use of expert opinions, and none concerns the appropriate standard of care owed to an identifiable plaintiffthe central issue before this Court. In Boscia v. Sharples, 860 A.2d 674 (R.I. 2004), we vacated a judgment because the trial justice erroneously excluded photographs of the vehicles involved in a collision. We held that expert testimony was not required to introduce into evidence photographs of vehicles damaged in a collision to prove causation of passengers' injuries. Id. at 678. The decision in Boscia is clearly distinguishable from the case at hand. The question before us is whether a jury could have found Rotondo negligent simply from a photograph of the grass, in the absence of expert testimony about the applicable standard of care for maintaining an athletic field and its environs. We agree with the trial justice that a photograph of the grass around the drain was not enough. We are of the opinion that the judgment as a matter of law in favor of Rotondo as against plaintiff's allegation of negligence was proper.