Opinion ID: 186742
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Zei Club's Duty Over an Adjacent Egress.

Text: 14 In the District of Columbia, as elsewhere, [t]o establish negligence a plaintiff must prove a duty of care owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty by the defendant, and damage to the interests of the plaintiff, proximately caused by the breach. District of Columbia v. Beretta, U.S.A., Corp., 847 A.2d 1127, 1135 n. 2 (D.C.2004) (quoting District of Columbia v. Harris, 770 A.2d 82, 87 (D.C.2001)) (quotation marks and alteration omitted). At issue in this case is whether the Zei Club had a duty to use reasonable care to protect Novak and Valdivia from criminal conduct in an alley used as the club's egress. 15 It is fundamental and well-settled that a business invitor has a duty of care to its patrons while they are on its premises. See, e.g., Seganish v. District of Columbia Safeway Stores, Inc., 406 F.2d 653, 655 (D.C.Cir.1968) (a business invitor's duty is to exercise reasonable care to keep his place of business safe for the customer using it); Smith v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 298 A.2d 214, 216 (D.C.1972) (discussing Seganish ). In the District of Columbia, under Viands v. Safeway Stores, 107 A.2d 118 (D.C.1954), and its progeny, a business's duty extends to protecting its customers from foreseeable harm caused by third parties at its exit doorway and the approach thereto. Id. at 121. In Viands, a customer leaving a grocery store through its only exit tripped over a small wagon that had been left on a public sidewalk by some young boys. Id. at 119. Though not store employees, the boys customarily gathered outside the store to offer delivery services for a fee. Id. The trial court instructed the jury that there can be no duty imposed on the defendant in this or any other case of this type with respect to space over which the defendant has no control and no legal opportunity for control. Id. The Court of Appeals disagreed, concluding that the trial court stated too narrow a view of a business's duty of care. Id. 16 Under Viands, business invitors in the District of Columbia have a duty of care to monitor the entrances and exits of their premises. There is nothing novel or extraordinary surrounding the duty of an invitor to use care with reference to exits, entrances, and approaches to his premises. Id. at 119. This duty, the Court concluded, is well grounded in the common law and Supreme Court precedent: 17 As long ago as 1881, the United States Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Harlan, stated the rule, founded in justice and necessity and illustrated in many adjudged cases in the American courts that an owner or occupant of land is liable to an invitee for injuries occasioned by the unsafe condition of the land or its approaches, if such condition was known to him and not to them, and was negligently suffered to exist, without timely notice to the public or to those who were likely to act upon such invitation. 18 Id. at 119-20 (quoting Bennett v. Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co., 102 U.S. 577, 580, 26 L.Ed. 235 (1881)) (emphasis added). Thus, a business invitor's duty does not strictly end at the shopkeeper's door. [I]t has been specifically held, the Court observed, that the duty to properly maintain approaches to an invitor's property is not to be determined by the exact boundaries of the premises, and that such duty does not end at the door through which the invitee makes his exit. Viands, 107 A.2d at 120. 19 Businesses also have a well-settled duty, Viands noted, to protect invitees from foreseeable harm caused by third parties. It has generally been held that the invitor is liable if he has not taken reasonable and appropriate measures to restrict the conduct of third parties of which he should have been aware and should have realized was dangerous. Id. Viands found persuasive the Restatement (First) of Torts § 348 (1939), which Viands summarized as follows: an invitor is liable to a business invitee for injury caused by the accidental negligence or intentionally harmful acts of third persons if the invitor by the exercise of reasonable care could have (a) discovered that such acts were being done or were about to be done, and (b) protected the invitee by controlling the conduct of the third persons or giving a warning adequate to enable him to avoid the harm. Id. at 120-21 (emphasis in original). 20 Viands turned on the fact that even though the paved public sidewalk where the injury occurred was not on the business's premises, it was the sole exit from the store and an area that the business put to substantial use. There was a parking lot on either side of the sidewalk leading up to the grocery store. Id. at 118. To enter or exit the store, customers [had to] cross [the] paved public sidewalk which leads up to the front of the store, to a door that was the only entrance or exit for use of shoppers. Id. Thus, Viands held that a reasonable jury could conclude a grocery store was liable for failing to protect exiting customers from the foreseeable negligent acts of agile, scurrying and troublesome boys regularly located outside the store's sole exit. Id. at 121. 21 This Court encountered a similar issue shortly thereafter in Merriam v. Anacostia National Bank, 247 F.2d 596 (D.C.Cir. 1957). In Merriam, a pedestrian was injured on a sidewalk in front of a bank under construction. Id. at 597-98. The construction allegedly created a dangerous condition on the sidewalk. We concluded a reasonable jury could find that [the] bank had actual knowledge of the danger in time to afford protection. Id. at 598. The bank could [not] stand by knowing a dangerous condition was being created on the public sidewalk in furtherance of [its]... private and special interests and be free from liability if [it] did nothing to protect the public from such danger. Id. Thus, [w]here [a] public way is used by private parties for their own private and special use, those private parties may be liable. Id. at 598 (emphasis added). 22 In Quigley's Pharmacy, Inc. v. Beebe, 261 A.2d 242 (D.C.1970), applying Merriam, the Court of Appeals held that the duty to invitees to maintain their safety when invitees are traveling directly and necessarily in the path of the entrance to adjacent private property arises from a business hav[ing] substantially used public space for a direct and special purpose in aid of [its] use of private property. Id. at 244; cf. Brown v. Consol. Rail Corp., 717 A.2d 309, 316 n. 9 (D.C.1998) (the common law duty . . . is `not invariably [placed] on the person in whom the land is titled')(quoting Husovsky v. United States, 590 F.2d 944, 953 (D.C.Cir.1978)) (second alteration in original). In Quigley's Pharmacy, a woman walking to a nearby mailbox caught her heel in a hole on a heavily used public sidewalk twenty feet from the exit to a pharmacy she had just left. A jury awarded the woman damages. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the pharmacy had no duty of care because the plaintiff was not attracted to the spot [where the injury occurred] as a calculated means of ingress or egress or for other business-related purposes. Quigley's Pharmacy, 261 A.2d at 244. The pharmacy derived no substantial special use from the path from its exit to the mailbox. Id. That is, the plaintiff was attracted to the spot not by anything the pharmacy did, but by her decision to use the mailbox. 23 The District of Columbia's substantial special use test for when a business invitor's duty extends to an egress is consistent with the approach other courts have taken in applying the Restatement (Second) of Torts. Comment 1 to § 332(3) provides that an invitor has a duty of care for the area included within the invitation. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 332 cmt. 1 (1965). According to Dean Prosser, the first reporter for the Restatement, [t]his `area of invitation' ... extends to the entrance to the property, and to a safe exit. W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 61, at 424 (5th ed.1984) (footnote omitted). As the Fifth Circuit has explained, the general law of torts, as reflected in the Restatement and in Prosser, does not preclude recovery against [a business invitor] for injury occurring in the entranceway to the defendants' premises. Banks v. Hyatt Corp., 722 F.2d 214, 222 (5th Cir.1984). 24 The Fifth Circuit in Banks, as well as our sister circuits, have adopted a sphere of control test which also recognizes a boundary of responsibility for proprietors that extends beyond their front door. Banks employed such a test in determining whether a hotel had a duty to protect a guest from a criminal assault just outside the hotel's exit and on a public sidewalk. Id. at 227. Applying the Restatement, the Third Circuit adopted that test in Fabend v. Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, LLC, 381 F.3d 152, 156 (3d Cir.2004). [W]hen an innkeeper possesses or exercises sufficient control over the property adjacent to his premises, he has the power to take protective measures to reduce the risk of injury on that property and has a duty to exercise it to the benefit of his patrons. Id. The sphere of control test, Fabend held, requires that we look at the circumstances of the case to ascertain whether sufficient control exists over the adjacent premises. Id.; see Pacheco v. United States, 220 F.3d 1126, 1132 (9th Cir.2000) (where defendants charged permit fee for beach access, the Court looked to, among other things, whether defendants exercised control over what visitors to the beach did in determining whether defendants had a duty to warn of dangers in the water adjacent to the beach). 6 25 The case before us raises this familiar issue of when a business invitor will be liable for a dangerous condition on adjacent land used as an entryway and approach. The District Court did not discuss the substantial special use test of Viands, Merriam, or Quigley's Pharmacy. Instead, with limited analysis, the District Court turned to Kline v. 1500 Massachusetts Avenue Apartment Corp., a preeminent case addressing a landlord's liability for conditions that are dangerous to tenants. 439 F.2d 477 (D.C.Cir.1970). In the District Court's view, Kline stands for the following proposition: A business owner has a duty of care to take preventative action if it has exclusive power over the area in which criminal activity occurs. Dist. Ct. Op. at 9 (citing Kline, 439 F.2d at 481) (emphasis added). Thus, because the MPD also patrolled the I Street alley at times, in the District Court's view, no other business invitor could exclusively control the I Street alley and therefore face liability. Presumably, then, Viands, Merriam, and Quigley's Pharmacy incorrectly suggest that business invitors can be liable for subjecting their patrons to dangerous conditions in their entryways and approaches because, under the District Court's reasoning, the police can always patrol a public area just beyond the shopkeeper's door and off the shopkeeper's property. 26 Kline, however, contains no such conflicting rule. The portion of Kline cited by the District Court addressed a specific duty of care: the duty of a landlord who has notice of repeated criminal assaults and robberies. Kline, 439 F.2d at 481. Kline notes the general rule [that] a private person does not have a duty to protect another from a criminal attack by a third person, but concludes that the rationale of this very broad general rule falters when it is applied to the conditions of modern day urban apartment living. Id. Instead, the landlord-tenant context mandates a special standard of care: 27 The landlord is no insurer of his tenants' safety, but he certainly is no bystander. And where, as here, the landlord has notice of repeated criminal assaults and robberies, has notice that these crimes occurred in the portion of the premises exclusively within his control, has every reason to expect like crimes to happen again, and has the exclusive power to take preventive action, it does not seem unfair to place upon the landlord a duty to take those steps which are within his power to minimize the predictable risk to his tenants. 28 Id. (emphasis added). Today, the duty discussed in Kline is well-known in the landlord-tenant world, just as Kline noted, the innkeeper-guest relationship has historically also been known to require a special duty of care by innkeepers. Id. at 482. The exclusive power to take preventive action, id. at 481, referred to by Kline, however, addresses a landlord's duty when tenants were being subjected to crimes against their persons and their property in and from the common hallways, id. at 483 (emphasis added). Kline concluded that landlords must exercise a duty of care for common hallways within their exclusive control, but had no occasion to address a business invitor's duty over adjacent property or the extensive case law addressing that area of tort law. Thus, Kline provides no support for the District Court's suggestion that a business invitor's liability for an entryway or approach should be governed by an exclusive power standard. To the contrary, extensive District of Columbia case law provides for a substantial special use standard, just as case law from other circuits prescribes a similar standard, and we have no basis for disturbing that precedent. 29 Looking at the facts in the light most favorable to appellants, and applying Viands, Merriam, and Quigley's Pharmacy, the Zei Club put the I Street alley to a substantial special use. See Viands, 107 A.2d at 119-21; Merriam, 247 F.2d at 598; Quigley's Pharmacy, 261 A.2d at 244. The Zei Club was set off from any public street and surrounded by alleys. Its patrons were invited to use the alleys as approaches and exits to the club. The attack occurred within a few steps of the exit in the I Street alley, which was the chief path of egress from the club. At the hour of the attack, the only exit from the club led to the I Street alley. The exact spot of the attack was on a calculated and necessary egress. Quigley's Pharmacy, 261 A.2d at 244. No other businesses used the alley at that hour, and the Zei Club routinely used its security guards to clear the alley of loiterers and maintain order. 7 30