Opinion ID: 1844436
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Union Park

Text: The majority relies on our decision in Union Park Memorial Chapel v. Hutt, 670 So.2d 64 (Fla.1996), which applied the undertaker's doctrine. Majority op. at 1186. In Union Park, we held that a funeral director who voluntarily undertakes to organize and lead a funeral procession owes a duty of reasonable care to procession participants. Id. at 65. We found that duty in section 324A of the Restatement, on which the majority today also relies. Simply stated, the Restatement provides that one who undertakes to act, even when under no obligation to do so, must act with reasonable care. Id. at 66-67. In Union Park, the funeral director had organized a funeral procession. The plaintiff was injured when, as part of that procession, she drove through a red light. Id. at 65. We explained that in joining a funeral procession, participants are likely to rely to some degree on the director for their safety. Id. at 67. In other words, because the funeral director had organized a funeral procession, participants felt free to drive through red lights, confident in their continued safety. Absent a funeral procession, the participants would have stopped at red lights, as the law required. Therefore, the procession placed them in a more precarious position than they otherwise would have found themselves in, and the funeral director had a duty to exercise reasonable care for their safety. Union Park relied on McCain v. Florida Power Corp., 593 So.2d 500, 503 (Fla. 1992), which held that [w]here a defendant's conduct creates a foreseeable zone of risk, the law generally will recognize a duty placed upon defendant either to lessen the risk or see that sufficient precautions are taken to protect others from the harm that the risk poses. In McCain, the power company's electrical equipment was located underground and known to be dangerous. A power company employee marked an area where a trench could safely be dug. McCain was injured when he used his trencher in an area the company had marked as safe but which actually contained power lines. Again, in McCain the power company assumed a specific duty concerning dangerous equipment and breached that duty in marking the area. Had the power company not marked off areas as safe, the plaintiff would not have felt comfortable digging a trench in an area containing power lines, and would have taken appropriate steps to ensure he did not dig over one. As was the case in Union Park, by marking areas as safe the defendant placed the plaintiff at greater risk than had the utility not acted at all. Both Union Park and McCain stand for the proposition that a person who undertakes an act to protect others from danger may be liable if the actions place others at greater risk than they would have experienced in the absence of the conduct. This is not such a case. Here, the sole basis for imposing a duty on Clay Electric is that it maintained the streetlights in question. That conduct, however, did not place pedestrians at greater risk than if Clay Electric never had provided streetlights at all. [21] Nor did Clay Electric's alleged failure to maintain the streetlights create a dangerous condition, as did the defendant's actions in McCain and Union Park. The natural state of nighttime is darkness. That is why cars have headlights. Pedestrians walking at night encountered darkness before Clay Electric provided the streetlights, and continue to encounter darkness where streetlights do not exist.