Opinion ID: 2499737
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Wendy's Owed A Duty Of Care To Mickelsen.

Text: As noted above, before a defendant can be held liable for negligence, it must be established that the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff. [14] Here, the superior court granted Wendy's Rule 12(b)(6) motion because it concluded, based on the allegations in the complaint, that Mickelsen had not pled facts sufficient to establish that Wendy's owed Mickelsen a duty of care to prevent the third-party behavior that caused Mickelsen's death. Mickelsen argues that the superior court erred as a matter of law in reaching that conclusion. [15] 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. [16] Here, the parties use different terms to define that basic relationship. In Mickelsen's view, the operative relationship is between a highway-adjacent commercial property owner whose customers regularly gain access to the property from that highway, and the other motorists who may be put at risk by the property owner's active governance of the access of those customers. In Wendy's view, the operative relationship is between a passive property owner and the motorists who may be put at risk by the negligent conduct of third parties (the potential patrons) on the public streets adjacent to the property. We use a three-step process to determine whether a duty of care exists. First, we look for a duty imposed by statute. [17] If none exists, we then determine if the current case falls in the class of cases controlled by existing precedent. [18] If no closely related case law exists, we weigh the public policy considerations enumerated in D.S.W. v. Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. [19] Here, Mickelsen does not allege a statutory duty, so we turn first to the case law.
Wendy's argues that the current case falls within two lines of existing cases, both of which would lead to the conclusion that no duty of care exists: the Schumacher [20] line of cases and the R.E. [21] line of cases. We discuss both in turn. The general rule of landowner liability as established by our case law is that landowners have a duty to use due care to guard against unreasonable risks created by dangerous conditions existing on their property. [22] The parties disagree on whether Mickelsen has alleged facts amounting to the existence of a dangerous condition on Wendy's property within the meaning of that rule. Wendy's argues that no duty exists because this case is controlled by Schumacher v. City & Borough of Yakutat , [23] which held that the definition of `conditions' that landowners may be required to protect against does not include the conduct of third parties. [24] In Schumacher, a child was injured when he collided with a car while sledding down a city-owned road. [25] The city was aware that children frequently sledded on the road and had taken no steps to reduce the danger. [26] After weighing the public policy considerations, we held that the city did not have a duty to protect [the child] from obvious risks created by his own conduct. [27] We explained: In essence, Schumacher is arguing that this court should impose liability on anyone who is aware of another's self-destructive behavior, has any ability to prevent that behavior, and fails to save the injured party from his or her own conduct. Such a holding would transform the law of negligence from a means whereby a person may recover for losses caused by a danger which another's unreasonable behavior created, to a mechanism permitting persons injured by their own conduct to compel any who failed to prevent that conduct to share the burdens of their negligence. We decline to permit such a result.[ [28] ] We also noted that other courts have expressly excluded third party activity from the definition of the `conditions' that landowners may be required to protect against. [29] Schumacher is distinguishable from the present case. The individual who caused the injury to the child in Schumacher was the child himself. In the present case, Mickelsen does not allege that Wendy's should be held liable for failing to protect Mickelsen from his own dangerous actions. Nor does Mickelsen's complaint, as we interpreted it in the previous section, allege that Wendy's should be held liable for failing to protect Mickelsen from the dangerous actions of a third party. Rather, Mickelsen's complaint alleges that Wendy's should be held liable for its own actions in creating a dangerous condition on its land. We held in Schumacher that the city was not liable for failing to protect the child from his own dangerous activity. [30] This holding does not imply that a landowner is categorically immune from liability for harm caused by a dangerous condition it has created merely because the dangerous condition also requires the participation of a third party. It is also relevant that the city in Schumacher was not in the business of providing safe sledding on its streets. Wendy's is in the business of providing an entry and exit to its customers. Holding that a business has a duty to conduct one of its core operations in a safe manner does not involve the transformation of the law of negligence that would have resulted had we held, in Schumacher, that the city had a duty to protect all who entered its land from harming themselves through self-destructive behavior. We thus conclude that the current case is not controlled by the Schumacher line of cases. Next, Wendy's argues that this case falls into the R.E. [31] class of cases, in which we have applied Restatement (Second) of Torts sections 314 through 320 to determine whether the defendant had a duty to protect the plaintiff from a third party's dangerous conduct. [32] Section 314 contains the traditional common-law rule that there is no general duty to safeguard others from foreseeable harm when that would require controlling the conduct of another person or warning of such conduct. [33] Section 315 provides that there is no duty so to control the conduct of a third person as to prevent him from causing physical harm to another unless ... a special relation exists between the actor and the third person which imposes a duty upon the actor to control the third person's conduct. Wendy's argues that under these standards, it had no duty to control the conduct of drivers on the road adjacent to its property, even if it was foreseeable to Wendy's that a driver like Hayward posed a risk of physical harm to a passing motorist like Mickelsen. Mickelsen responds that the current case does not belong to the R.E. class of cases because of the marked differences between those cases and this one. In each of the R.E. cases, the defendant was a government entity and the dangerous third party conduct at issue was intentional criminal behavior. [34] Here, the defendant is a commercial property owner and the dangerous third party conduct was the negligent driving of the defendant's third-party customer. We agree with Mickelsen that the current case does not belong to the R.E. class of cases. Although we decided that the Restatement sections stated the optimal rule of law in the class of cases involving the government's duty to protect potential victims from the criminal conduct of third parties, it does not follow that we have adopted the sections wholesale or without regard to context. We have said that the process of finding that a defendant owes a duty to a plaintiff is one which involves a fine balancing of conflicting policies; it is in essence an attempt to determine whether it would be fair and equitable to require an individual to act ... in a specified manner so as to avoid undue risk of harm to third persons. [35] Because the current case presents a significantly different set of conflicting policies and other considerations, we conclude that the current case is not controlled by the R.E. class of cases.
Mickelsen's appeal primarily relies on the Restatement (Second) of Torts section 364 as establishing Wendy's duty of care. We have not previously recognized the section 364 standard as controlling and no Alaska case has previously cited it. It is unnecessary for us to adopt the Restatement in this case because our decision in Webb v. City & Borough of Sitka [36] provides controlling precedent. Where existing Alaska case law provides adequate grounds for deciding an issue, judicial economy argues in favor of relying on those grounds rather than adopting a new rule in order to reach the same result. Webb established that [a] landowner or owner of other property must act as a reasonable person in maintaining his property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all of the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden on the respective parties of avoiding the risk. [37] According to Mickelsen's complaint, [t]he use of the 5th Avenue exit as a short-cut entry ... is a[n] ... artificial condition that posed an unreasonable risk of harm to west-bound traffic on 5th Avenue, and Wendy's failed to take action to make this dangerous condition safe. As a result of Wendy's alleged creation of this short-cut entry route and its alleged failure to take reasonable steps to prevent the use of that route, Wendy's customers regularly drove across two lanes of oncoming traffic in order to reach the restaurant. In terms of the Webb factors, the alleged dangerous condition was likely to result in traffic accidents and resulting injury; a collision between a customer's vehicle and oncoming traffic was likely to be gravely serious; and Wendy's was in a much stronger position to bear the burden of avoiding the risk than drivers in the west-bound lanes such as Mickelsen. Such drivers were effectively powerless to prevent third parties such as Hayward from taking the short-cut. Wendy's, if nothing else, might have altered the design of the Fifth Avenue exit or posted more effective warnings. Whether Wendy's failure to take such steps was unreasonable, and whether it breached its duty, are not questions before us at this stage of the case. In sum, Wendy's had a duty under Webb to maintain its property in a reasonably safe manner in view of all relevant circumstances. This duty applied to those entering and exiting Wendy's and to those who might be affected by those entering and exiting Wendy's, pedestrian or otherwise. [38] It may yet be proper for the superior court to dismiss Mickelsen's claim on summary judgment, or it may be that the case must go to trial. But Mickelsen's claim cannot be dismissed as a matter of law based on Wendy's owing no duty of care to passing motorists allegedly endangered by the artificial conditions on Wendy's property. [39] Finally, having concluded that Webb provides controlling precedent in the present case, it is unnecessary for us to determine whether the public policy factors enumerated in D.S.W. v. Fairbanks North Star Borough School District [40] support the imposition of a duty of care.