Opinion ID: 835876
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Negligence: Foreseeability and Duty of Care

Text: We next consider Oregon law on what constitutes negligence in a professional malpractice case such as this one. In Fazzolari, this court reviewed its earlier negligence cases and restated the circumstances in which one party can recover damages for harm caused by another: [U]nless the parties invoke a status, a relationship, or a particular standard of conduct that creates, defines, or limits the defendant's duty, the issue of liability for harm actually resulting from defendant's conduct properly depends on whether that conduct unreasonably created a foreseeable risk to a protected interest of the kind of harm that befell the plaintiff. 303 Or. at 17, 734 P.2d 1326. Following Fazzolari, this court has discussed a defendant's liability for harm that the defendant's conduct causes another in terms of the concept of reasonable foreseeability, rather than the more traditional duty of care. A claim for common-law negligence thus includes, among other elements, a foreseeable risk of harm to the plaintiff and conduct by the defendant that is unreasonable in light of that risk. Solberg v. Johnson, 306 Or. 484, 490, 760 P.2d 867 (1988). However, as the passage from Fazzolari quoted above indicates, if the plaintiff invokes a special status, relationship, or standard of conduct, then that relationship may create, define, or limit the defendant's duty to the plaintiff. Duty also becomes an issue when, as here, the plaintiff seeks damages for purely economic losses. [O]ne ordinarily is not liable for negligently causing a stranger's purely economic loss without injuring his person or property. Hale v. Groce, 304 Or. 281, 284, 744 P.2d 1289 (1987). Instead, the plaintiff is required to allege [s]ome source of a duty outside the common law of negligence. Id. Put another way, liability for purely economic harm must be predicated on some duty of the negligent actor to the injured party beyond the common law duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable harm. Onita Pacific Corp. v. Trustees of Bronson, 315 Or. 149, 159, 843 P.2d 890 (1992). In this case, of course, plaintiff seeks damages for purely economic losses, and Oregon law, therefore, required it to allege the existence of such a duty to state a claim for relief. Here, plaintiff did so by alleging a special relationship with defendant. Defendant suggests that Fazzolari divides the world of torts into two categories: (1) tort claims in which the plaintiff invokes a special relationship, liability depends solely on the scope of the duty associated with that relationship, and the foreseeability standard of Fazzolari plays no role; and (2) tort claims in which the plaintiff invokes no special relationship, and the general negligence standard of reasonable foreseeability applies. [6] Our review of the cases does not reveal such a clear division between different types of tort claims and, in any event, this case does not require us to address that issue. Here, as noted, there was a special relationship between defendant and plaintiff that established the existence of a duty of care on the part of defendant. However, as discussed below, the scope of that particular duty in that particular relationship turns out to be limited to harms to plaintiff that were reasonably foreseeable. Even when a special relationship is the basis for the duty of care owed by one person to another, this court has held that, if the special relationship (or status or standard of conduct) does not prescribe a particular scope of duty, then [c]ommon law principles of reasonable care and foreseeability of harm are relevant. Cain v. Rijken, 300 Or. 706, 717, 717 P.2d 140 (1986) (quoted with approval in Fazzolari, 303 Or. at 16-17, 734 P.2d 1326). This court further elucidated the relationship between foreseeability and duty in Buchler, in which it held that the state was not liable to persons harmed by an escaped prison inmate, in the absence of allegations that the state knew or should have known that the inmate was likely to cause bodily harm to others. This court stated: Either formulationduty or foreseeabilityis a method of describing how the law limits the circumstances or conditions under which one member of society may expect another to pay for a harm suffered. 316 Or. at 509, 853 P.2d 798. This court in Buchler held that there [was] a status occupied by [the] defendant that raise[d] duties of care. Id. at 505, 853 P.2d 798 (emphasis in original). On examination, however, this court determined that those duties of care were based on common-law principles and did not provide a separate basis for liability in that case, in part because the harm to plaintiff was not foreseeable: It is not possible for a reasonable person to find from this record that a custodian would have known that this particular prisoner was `likely to cause bodily harm' of the kind that befell plaintiffs two days after his escape. The tragic death and injuries were not legally foreseeable results of this particular prisoner's escape. They are not risks unreasonably created by that escape, nor did they occur because of violation by defendant of any duty arising out of any special relationship between the plaintiffs and the defendant or defendant's status as the prisoner's jailer.  Id. at 507, 853 P.2d 798 (emphasis added). Thus, under Fazzolari, Cain, and Buchler, when a plaintiff alleges a special relationship as the basis for the defendant's duty, the scope of that duty may be defined or limited by common-law principles such as foreseeability. [7]