Opinion ID: 2669787
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defendant’s Duty and Breach

Text: The parties also do not dispute that Knowlton was an invitee on the Club’s property. “[A] property owner owes two duties to an invitee, [(1)] to use reasonable care in maintaining the premises in a reasonably safe condition and [(2)] to give the invitee warning of concealed perils which are or should be known to the property owner, and which are unknown to the invitee and cannot be discovered by him through the exercise of due care.” Fieldhouse v. Tam Inv. Co., 959 So. 2d 1214, 1215 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007) (quoting Fenster v. Publix Supermarkets, Inc., 785 So. 2d 737, 739 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001)). As part of the duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition, a property owner also has a duty to maintain the property to prevent foreseeable risks that exist on adjacent property. This is true because the “duty element of a negligence action focuses on whether the defendant’s conduct foreseeably created a broader ‘zone of risk’ that poses a general threat of harm to others.” Almarante v. Art Inst. of Fort Lauderdale, Inc., 921 So. 2d 703, 705 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (quoting Goldberg v. Fla. Power & Light Co., 899 So. 2d 1105, 1110 (Fla. 2005)). Accordingly, a “landowner’s conduct can give rise to a zone of risk extending beyond the physical boundaries of his property when harm reaching outside those boundaries is foreseeable.” Id. In Almarante, the plaintiff was struck and injured by a motorcycle while 7 Case: 12-15739 Date Filed: 04/14/2014 Page: 8 of 18 crossing a highway that ran between two school dormitory buildings that she frequented as a student. Id. at 704. The defendant moved to dismiss on the basis that it had no legal duty to provide a reasonably safe passage across property that it did not own. Id. The Almarante court held that plaintiff’s complaint stated a valid cause of action because the school created a foreseeable zone of danger for its students by building its dormitory on either side of a busy highway without taking steps to ensure their safe passage. Id. at 705; see also Bailey Drainage Dist. v. Stark, 526 So. 2d 678, 682 (Fla. 1988) (per curiam) (holding that even if overgrown brush causing a dangerous condition for passing motorists was “located on privately owned property so that removal is not an option, the [defendant] still has a duty to warn of the danger”); Gunlock v. Gill Hotels Co., 622 So. 2d 163, 164 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993) (holding that a hotel built adjacent to a highway “owed a duty to exercise reasonable care for the safety of its invitees in passing over the highway to and from appellee’s hotel facilities”). In this case, it is undisputed that the Point is only accessible from the Abaco Club property that defendants purchased and developed for use by invitees such as Knowlton. It is also undisputed that the Point presented foreseeable risks to those who entered it. There was also evidence that Abaco Club employees knew that its guests frequented the Point. Because the Point is a foreseeable danger made accessible by defendants in developing the adjacent Abaco Club, the defendants, 8 Case: 12-15739 Date Filed: 04/14/2014 Page: 9 of 18 while they had no duty to maintain the Point property that they did not own, had a duty to maintain their own Club property in a reasonably safe manner to protect its invitees against that danger. 2 Defendants contend that they owed Knowlton no such duty because “the risks associated with the Point are inherent in the natural landscape, open and obvious and just as foreseeable to [Knowlton] as to Defendants.” Appellee Br. 26. This argument, however, ignores the nature of the defendants’ duty here. “[A]lthough the open and obvious nature of a hazard may discharge a landowner’s duty to warn, it does not discharge the duty to maintain the property in a reasonably safe condition. A plaintiff’s knowledge of a dangerous condition simply raises the issue of comparative negligence and precludes summary judgment.” Fieldhouse, 959 So. 2d at 1216 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The district court, in granting defendants’ motion for judgment as a matter of law, stated that “an owner has no duty to warn where the danger is obvious and apparent, or the invitee otherwise has knowledge of the danger which is equal to or superior to the owner’s knowledge.” Collins, No. 1:09-cv-22423, slip op at 13. This statement of the law, however, focuses only on the duty to warn. It fails to 2 Indeed, this was precisely plaintiff’s theory of the case at trial. Following the presentation of evidence at trial, the court summarized the position of plaintiff’s counsel: “Mr. Parks does not maintain that the Ritz should have done anything on the Point to fix the property. . . . Mr. Parks contends that the Ritz should have put a fence or warning sign on the Ritz’s own property saying [don’t] go out to the Point. Right, Mr. Parks?” Plaintiff’s counsel responded, “Correct.” Collins, No. 1:09-cv-22423, slip op at 3 n.4 (alterations in original). 9 Case: 12-15739 Date Filed: 04/14/2014 Page: 10 of 18 consider the defendants’ separate duty to use ordinary care to maintain the Abaco Club property in a reasonably safe manner to protect against foreseeable dangers on the Point by means other than posting a warning. The district court thus erred in granting judgment as a matter of law to the defendants on the duty owed to Knowlton as an invitee. The district court’s instructions to the jury were also erroneous in a similar respect. The district court instructed that the preliminary issue for the jury is whether David Knowlton was defendants’ invitee when on the Point, and after explaining the duties owed to invitees and non-invitees, instructed that it was “undisputed that the [d]efendants did not own the Point.” Jury Instructions 8-9, July 25, 2012, ECF No. 404. These instructions pointed the jury in the wrong direction: the question was not whether defendants owed to Knowlton a duty as an invitee while he was on the Point—plainly they did not—but whether the defendants owed a duty to Knowlton as an invitee on Abaco Club property. The instructions also failed to accurately explain defendants’ duty to use ordinary care to maintain the Abaco Club property in a reasonably safe manner to protect its invitees against foreseeable dangers on the Point.