Opinion ID: 202879
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Claims Against the Hotel

Text: The district court dismissed four claims against the Hotel, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), for failure to state a cognizable claim. These claims sought to impose primary liability on the Tremont Hotel based on general principles of tort law, including three provisions in the Restatement (Second) of Torts and principles of negligent entrustment and negligent supervision. Plaintiffs reassert these generalized principles on appeal and request that we reinstate the four claims, despite the absence of any Massachusetts cases recognizing these theories of liability in similar circumstances. We briefly summarize each of the four claims, as well as the most closely related Massachusetts case law. We then address the viability of the four claims collectively, which suffer from a common flaw. Plaintiffs' first and fourth claims against the Hotel are premised on the theory that a lessor may be responsible for the negligent actions of his tenant, if the lessor was aware of the tenant's use of the property and the risks associated with that use. In support of this theory, plaintiffs point to § 379A of the Restatement [6] , which describes claims against lessors based on the actions of their lessees, and to the doctrine of negligent entrustment [7] , which applies generally to owners of personal property, although they have not identified any Massachusetts cases that support this theory of liability. Plaintiffs argue that the Hotel can be held liable under this theory because the Hotel knew, at the time the lease was signed, that the Roxy would serve alcohol and had grounds to know that there would be an unreasonable risk of over-serving patrons. More specifically, plaintiffs point to a diagram of the Roxy's layout and the nature of the business. They also note that after the Roxy opened, and during the course of its nearly twenty-year existence, the Hotel received reports from the owners of the Roxy about various incidents that were investigated or responded to by the police. Additionally, plaintiffs cite the lease agreement as evidence of the Hotel's knowledge that the Roxy's operations would create a risk of over-service. The lease required the Roxy to comply with its liquor license, to obtain liquor liability insurance, to indemnify the Hotel for any liability resulting from the sale of alcohol at the Roxy, and to notify the Hotel of any liquor license (or other legal) violations by the Roxy. The Hotel also reserved the right to inspect the premises, to approve the floor plan for the Roxy, to impose rules and regulations on the Roxy, and to evict the Roxy if problems arose which were not rectified. According to the plaintiffs, all of these lease provisions, taken together, show that the Hotel was aware of the risks created by the Roxy's alcohol sales. Plaintiffs' second and third claims against the Hotel are based on their related theory that the Hotel exercised control over the Roxy's business practices, and thus can be held independently liable for the risks created by those practices. Here, they point to § 315 [8] and § 318 [9] of the Restatement, which deal with special relationships between a defendant and a third party. Plaintiffs note that these Restatement provisions have been recognized as describing viable claims in Massachusetts. See, e.g., Medina v. Pillemer, No. 04-0290-H, 2005 WL 3627226, at  (Mass.Super.Dec.23, 2005) (noting four general types of special relationships that have given rise to third-party liability in Massachusetts); Davis v. United States, 340 F.Supp.2d 79, 91 (D.Mass.2004) (Massachusetts law would likely impose a duty on a private person to protect another from the wrongful acts of third parties based `on the existence of a special relationship between the negligent person and the person or entity on whom it is sought to impose liability'. (quoting Mosko v. Raytheon Co., 416 Mass. 395, 622 N.E.2d 1066, 1070 (1993))). Plaintiffs argue that the Hotel and the Roxy had a special relationship, based on the terms of the lease, and that this relationship permitted, and indeed required, the Hotel to control the Roxy's actions. Whatever the merits abstractly of these theories of liability against the Hotel, they fail in this case because each of them requires a showing that the Roxy behaved in an unreasonably risky or negligent manner. Restatement § 379A states that a landlord may only be liable if he knew, or had reason to know, that the tenant's activities would unavoidably involve such an unreasonable risk. Similarly, § 315 of the Restatement provides for liability when an actor has a special relationship with another, which imposes a duty upon the actor to prevent the third person from causing physical harm to others. (Although § 315 does not expressly require a showing that the third party was negligent, such a requirement is implicit, and has been recognized by Massachusetts courts. See infra. ) Section 318 of the Restatement provides for liability for landowners who allow others to use their land for activities that create an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to third persons. Finally, as to its negligent entrustment and supervision claims, the plaintiffs themselves allege that a landlord's duty is to reasonably mitigate or reduce the foreseeable risk of harm caused or created by a pattern of inappropriate, negligent conduct. Each of these theories, then, requires not only that the defendant either controls or has a special relationship with the third-party actor (e.g., the Roxy), but also that the third-party actor behaved in an unreasonably risky manner. As we explained above, Massachusetts courts have unequivocally stated that a tavern-keeper does not create an unreasonable risk to patrons or others unless he serves alcohol to a patron who is visibly intoxicated. Therefore, without any such evidence (and there is none in this case), the plaintiffs have not, and cannot, show that the Roxy engaged in the requisite unreasonably risky behavior that would create the possibility of the Hotel's liability. [10] A closer look at a valid § 315 claim demonstrates the necessity of identifying negligent or wrongful behavior by the third party. [11] In presenting their § 315 claim (involving a special relationship between an actor (the Hotel) and a third party (the Roxy)), the plaintiffs cite to Davis, 340 F.Supp.2d at 91, which acknowledged that Massachusetts courts had recognized this theory of liability. Davis specifically states, however, that the relevant duty is to protect another from the wrongful acts of third parties based on the existence of a special relationship between the negligent person and the person or entity on whom the duty is imposed. Id. (emphasis added) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The court's use of wrongful and negligent to describe the third party action indicates that even if a § 315 cause of action exists, the duty thereby recognized is one of preventing or stopping negligence. See also Atwood v. Cape Cod Hosp., 55 Mass.App.Ct. 1107, 770 N.E.2d 1002, 1002 (2002)(holding that a negligent entrustment claim fails, as a matter of law, where the third party had not behaved negligently). Therefore, in the absence of a plausible theory of negligent conduct on the part of the Roxy, the Hotel cannot be liable pursuant to the theories advanced by plaintiffs. In an effort to avoid this conclusion, plaintiffs rely on two cases  Krueger v. Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta, Inc., No. 004292G, 2001 WL 1334996 (Mass.Super. May 18, 2001), and Jean W. v. Commonwealth, 414 Mass. 496, 610 N.E.2d 305, 315 (1993)  to demonstrate that Massachusetts courts have been willing to apply basic tort principles . . . to fact patterns that have no direct precedent. [12] In Krueger, a trial court permitted a claim against a landlord dormitory owner to go forward, where the tenant (a college fraternity) had served alcohol to a minor, who later died. The court agreed that a landlord typically would not have a duty to protect students from underage drinking. However, the defendant also held a dormitory license and city regulations required that licensees be responsible for ensuring that minors are not served alcoholic beverages. Krueger, 2001 WL 1334996, at . Therefore, in Krueger, the cause of action was based on the landlord's duty, pursuant to the license, to prevent its tenants from serving alcohol to minors. Here, nothing in either the lease or any publicly granted license imposes a duty on the Hotel to control or monitor the tenant's behavior vis-a-vis third-party patrons. Krueger therefore does not support the existence of a relevant cause of action. In Jean W., the special relationship that had not previously been recognized was one of physical custody or control over a person. 610 N.E.2d at 315. The third party who injured the plaintiffs was a convicted murderer who had been erroneously released, due to a clerical mistake, from prison and placed on parole. While on parole, he was required to regularly report to a state parole officer. Id. at 306-07. Given that the state had a custodial and supervisory relationship with the convict, the court recognized that the plaintiffs could state a claim for negligence against the state. Id. at 315. Here, although the Hotel had some ability to influence the Roxy's actions, it did not remotely have the kind of control over the Roxy that the Commonwealth in Jean W. had over a prisoner in its custody. The SJC's willingness to acknowledge the possibility of a cause of action in that case does not permit us to go beyond the boundaries of existing state law here.