Court Opinion

ID: 9733023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:50:04.282809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:37.760874
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(dissenting). The question presented is whether the fireman’s rule, stated in Kreski v Modern Wholesale Electric Supply Co, 429 Mich 347; 415 NW2d 178 (1987), bars an action by a *197police officer, injured following a vehicular chase, against a municipality for breach of the statutory obligation to maintain a road "in reasonable repair so that it is reasonably safe and convenient for public travel.”1
The majority rules that Charles G. Woods, a Center Line police officer, "suffered an injury from a specific risk directly connected with the performance of his duties as a police officer, justifying application of the fireman’s rule,”2 reverses the Court of Appeals3 and affirms the summary disposition granted by the circuit court to the City of Warren.
I would affirm the Court of Appeals.
i
Woods and his wife commenced this action against the City of Warren claiming that Woods’ injuries were caused by the failure of the city to maintain, as required by the highway exception to the governmental tort liability act, a road in reasonable repair.4
A
Woods was employed as a police officer for the City of Center Line. While on patrol, he received a radio dispatch that a stolen automobile was in the vicinity. He observed the automobile traveling at a high rate of speed. He pursued the vehicle, and alerted other police vehicles.
Although it had been snowing, the street had been salted and cleared. During the chase, the *198stolen vehicle reached a speed of one hundred miles per hour,, and, at one point, became airborne. Woods testified on deposition that his speed did not exceed fifty-five miles per hour at any time during the chase. Further, Woods testified that he reduced his speed to twenty-five miles per hour before he approached the intersection whére the accident occurred. Woods’ vehicle hit the bottom of the grade where the roadway slopes dramatically, and slid into the front cement porch of a house, resulting in his injuries.
Woods alleged that ice had accumulated in chuckholes at the intersection, and that his vehicle began to slide and the brakes did not hold. He further alleged that the "frozen condition was caused by the several and many ruts and chuck holes in the street and said lack of repair in the roadway which virtually eliminated the crown of the roadway which caused the roadway to hold water and create[d] a dangerous frozen condition on its surface during cold weather,”5 and that "in previous years, Defendant had taken steps to correct the same and in fact knew, or should have known, that this was an annual occurrence in that area and it nevertheless took no steps to properly remedy said condition.”6
B
In granting summary disposition, the circuit judge referred to the statement in Kreski, supra, p 376, that the fireman’s rule is not limited to absolving "landowners and occupiers from an undue burden of keeping their premises safe for fire fighters and police officers.” In Kreski, this Court said that the "major underpinning of the rule is *199that the job of safety officers is to confront risks generally caused by negligence, and thus, as a matter of policy, the safety officers may not recover damages for injuries arising out of negligence in causing the reason for their presence.” The circuit judge concluded that the "policy rationales espoused in Kreski support application of the fireman’s rule where, as here, the injuries complained of arise from the normal, inherent, and foreseeable risk of the profession.”
The Court of Appeals reversed, stating that "it is clear that the hazardous condition of the road was wholly unrelated to the occurrence which required the officer’s presence on the road. Further, the road was open to the public and, while the risks thus encountered may have been foreseeable, they were not unique to plaintiff’s profession. We conclude that the fact pattern in this case is an exception to the fireman’s rule.”7
C
In reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals, the majority states that the circuit court correctly granted summary disposition because "Woods’ injury resulted directly from his performance of police duties.”8 The majority also states that "[t]he fireman’s rule prevents police officers and fire fighters from recovering for injuries sustained in the course of duty.”9
Turning to the facts in the instant case, the majority states that Woods’ "crash occurred while he was performing a classic police function”; "[n]eeding to maintain sight of the stolen vehicle” he "accelerated to speeds between forty and forty-
*200five miles per hour”; "[djriving at high speeds on potentially icy roads obviously increases the risk of an accident”; "[t]his injury clearly stems from the performance of a fundamental police function”; "[i]n such circumstances, the fireman’s rule 'foundational policy rationale’ applies.”10
The majority has resolved factual issues with legal conclusions. On the record, incomplete as it is, the issue of Woods’ speed at the time of the accident is disputed. While the city alleges, and the majority assumes, that Woods was traveling at a high speed when he entered the intersection where the accident occurred, Woods maintains that he had slowed to a speed of twenty-five miles per hour before he approached the intersection. Further, the majority has concluded that the accident was the direct result of ''high speed” driving, and not of a road defect. On the record, however, this too is disputed. I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals, which would remand for trial, and direct that factual issues be submitted for resolution by the trier of fact.
ii
The statutory obligation to maintain a road in reasonable repair was imposed for the benefit of all who use the road, fire fighters and police officers included. Unless the performance of their duties, and not a defect of the road, causes a fire fighter’s or police officer’s injury, these officers may maintain an action for failure to keep a road in reasonable repair.
The focus of the inquiry, then, is causation. If the accident occurred because the road was defective, whether or not Woods was driving differently, as the result of police chase, than would a civilian *201user of the road at the same time under the same road condition, the fireman’s rule does not apply, and the city is subject to liability.11
On this summary disposition record, it was a question of fact, and not of law, whether Woods was driving in a manner different than an ordinary citizen because Woods was acting as a police officer and, if so, whether the accident resulted from this different behavior, and not from a defect of the road. As a police officer, Woods had a duty to pursue the stolen automobile. If in pursuit he was driving at high speed on the icy road, and it was this behavior, and not a defect in the road, that caused the. accident, Woods should not recover damages from the city. But, if Woods had, indeed, slowed to twenty-five miles per hour, and the trier of fact finds that pursuit of the stolen automobile was not a substantial cause of the accident, he should be able to recover.
The instant case is analogous to Cella v Interstate Properties, 232 NJ Super 232; 556 A2d 1262 (1989), where a police officer, investigating a suspicious car, slipped on ice that had formed in a depressed area of a shopping center parking lot. The trial court summarily dismissed plaintiff’s claim against the owners of the shopping center for negligence in failing to keep the lot in reasonable repair. The appellate court reversed on the ground that there were factual issues for the jury to decide:12
*202"[A] jury should decide whether it was reasonable for defendant to have expected that anyone would walk over that area of the lot at 4:30 a.m. and, if so, whether defendant should have either corrected or reasonably warned of the condition.[13]
In the instant case, the majority, like the trial court in Celia, has drawn the factual conclusion that Woods’ injuries were substantially caused by the extreme speed of the chase. However, as in Celia, this Court is "hampered ... by the lack of a detailed record.”14
III
The origin of the fireman’s rule was traced by this Court in Kreski to an 1892 decision of the Illinois Supreme Court.15 The Illinois court ruled that a fireman cannot recover for a failure of a person in possession of premises to keep the premises in safe repair because a fireman was a mere licensee and not an invitee.
The factual situations in the two cases consolidated on appeal and dealt with in the Kreski opinion illustrate the classic applications of the fireman’s rule: A fire fighter may not recover against the owner on the theory that the owner’s negligence was responsible for the fire that brought the fire fighter to the premises or in*203creased the hazard once he had arrived, nor may a fire fighter recover against the owner on the theory that the owner failed to keep the premises in safe repair. In later cases, the fireman’s rule was extended to bar actions by police officers.
In Kreski, the personal representative of a fire fighter sought to recover against the owner and occupier of a building and the Detroit Edison Company, claiming that their negligence in maintaining the building contributed to the collapse of the building after the fire had started and caused his death.
Another aspect of the fireman’s rule is illustrated by Reetz v Tipit, Inc, decided with Kreski, where a police officer responded to a burglary and entered the premises through a broken window. The officer was seriously injured when she fell through an open trap door, located immediately behind swinging doors. The interior was dark and the officer was using a flashlight. The officer sought to recover against the owner of the premises on the theory that, by leaving the trap door open, he had failed to maintain the premises in safe repair.
A
This Court recognized in Kreski that the rationale for the fireman’s rule may not justify barring recovery for negligence in every case that an officer is injured in the line of duty.16 The majority’s statement that ”[t]he fireman’s rule prevents *204police officers and fire fighters from recovering for injuries sustained in the course of duty”17 should not be read as barring recovery simply because the officer was injured in the line of duty.
An officer, I agree with the majority, may not recover where a substantial cause of his injury is confronting a risk " 'inherent in fulfilling the police or fire fighting duties,’ ”18 or " 'the performance of the very function police officers and fire fighters are intended to fulfill.’ ”19
It thus becomes necessary to distinguish between those risks that an officer "assumes”20 and those that he does not. An officer does not, for example, assume the risk so as to bar an action, any more so than any other citizen, of being struck by a person who runs a red light. Nor would it promote the public policy identified in Kreski as the underlying rationale of the rule to hold that a tavern is not subject to dramshop liability to a police officer who is injured, while taking a crime report from a citizen, by a drunken driver who went over the curb onto the sidewalk. *205Surely allowing the citizen, struck by the drunken driver at the same time, to maintain an action and denying the officer the right to do so would not advance that policy. Although the officer is on duty, the risk he assumed when he became an officer does not include being struck on the sidewalk by an automobile driven by a drunken driver.
Surely, also, neither does an officer, more so than any other citizen, assume the risk that a tire of a police cruiser, or the cruiser itself, is unsafe because of product defect. The rationale of the fireman’s rule would not support barring a products liability action against the manufacturer of the tire or automobile.
B
In the instant case, in contrast to Kreski and Reetz, the injury occurred on land that was open to the public. The applicability of the fireman’s rule to such injuries was expressly left open in Kreski.21
When the fireman’s rule first developed, firemen were injured on premises that were not open to the public. In later cases, a number of courts22 adopted the view, now expressed in the Second *206Restatement of Torts,23 that the liability of the owner or possessor of land to a fire fighter or police officer who suffers harm because of a condition of the premises open to the public is the same as the liability to an invitee, but that, otherwise, the liability is the same as the liability to a licensee.24
The Second Restatement of Torts illustrates the *207need to draw the line less brightly than the opinion of the majority might be read as drawing it when it stated that a department store is subject to liability to an officer who enters the premises "to make an official inquiry concerning a former employee,” and is injured by the collapse of entrance steps because, in such a case, the officer is entering, albeit "in the performance of his public duty,” a "part of the land held open to the public” and he is deemed to be an invitee, not a mere licensee.25
The dangers that a police officer, by the nature of his profession, confronts do not include the risk of injury from defects on land open to the public. The owner of land that is open to the public owes no less of a duty to a police officer who is present than to a member of the general public on the same premises. The city’s duty, owed to all users of the road, to keep the road in reasonable repair is not suspended if a defect of the road causes injury to a police officer.
*208IV
The question is ultimately one of legislative intent. There is no reason to suppose that the Legislature intended that the city would not be liable, in situations where it would otherwise be liable, if a police officer suffers injuries caused by a defect of the road, and not by police chase driving behavior.26

 MCL 691.1402; MSA 3.996(102).

 Ante, p 186, reporter’s syllabus.

 183 Mich App 656; 455 NW2d 382 (1990).

 See n 1.

 Plaintiff’s complaint, p 7.

 Id.

 Woods, n 3 supra, p 659.

 Ante, p 190.

 Id.

 Id., p 192.

 The issue of causation can be approached in a number of ways, e.g., even if the city was at fault in failing to maintain the road in reasonable repair, the city would be relieved of liability if Woods’ driving behavior, as the result of a high speed police chase, was a substantial cause of the accident.

 The court further stated:
We are somewhat hampered in our decision of this matter by the lack of a detailed record. [Id., p 234.]
*202A jury must answer this question [whether the officer was in a public area at the time of his fall]. [Id., p 240.]
[A] jury may also consider if some other warning should have been placed or given. [Id., p 242.]

 Id.

 Id., p 234.

 Kreski, supra, p 358, citing Gibson v Leonard, 143 Ill 182; 32 NE 182 (1892).

 As a result of examining the policy rationales supporting the fireman’s rule, we are persuaded that considerations of fairness and public policy compel us to adopt the rule for Michigan. However, we must clarify that we are not attempting to delineate the precise parameters of the rule in this opinion. Several exceptions involving factual situations not presented here have developed in the states employing a fireman’s rule.
For example, the alleged acts and omissions in the instant *204cases all occurred prior to plaintiffs’ arrivals. There are no allegations of wrongdoing or negligence after plaintiffs were on the scene. Further, neither plaintiff has alleged negligence rising to the level of wilful, wanton, or intentional misconduct. In both cases, the incidents took place when the premises were closed. Therefore, we are not presented with a situation in which the injuries occurred when the buildings were open to the public for business. [Id., pp 370-371.]
All of these scenarios have been faced by courts in fine tuning their fireman’s rules to best balance the underlying rationales with' the interest of allowing recovery when those rationales are not implicated. By adopting a fireman’s rule on the basis of public policy, we also will be able to flexibly address the different fact patterns as they are presented. [Id., p 371. Citation omitted.]

 Ante, p 190.

 Id., p 195, quoting Kreski, supra, p 372.

 Id., pp 190-191, quoting Kreski, supra, p 368.

 Kreski, supra, pp 360-365.

 [W]e are not presented with a situation in which the injuries occurred when the buildings were open to the public for business. [Kreski, supra, p 371.]

 See, e.g., Hedberg v Mendino, 218 Ill App 3d 1087; 161 Ill Dec 850; 579 NE2d 398 (1991) (policeman treated as invitee where he was injured on a defective sidewalk leading to premises that he was investigating regarding possible prowler); Celia, supra (policeman treated as invitee where he slipped and fell in a shopping center parking lot while investigating a suspicious car); Brady v Consolidated Rail Corp, 35 Ohio St 3d 161; 519 NE2d 387 (1988) (policeman treated as invitee because land was held open for use of the public, where, in the course of duty, he entered a railroad right of way); Caroff v Liberty Lumber Co, 146 NJ Super 353; 369 A2d 983 (1977) (state park *206ranger treated as invitee where he slipped and fell on a roadway that was used by company’s business invitees).
Cf. Dini v Naiditch, 20 Ill 2d 406, 416-417; 170 NE2d 881 (1960) (fireman treated as invitee where owner of a hotel failed to exercise reasonable care in maintenance of his property, resulting in injury to fireman — "Inasmuch as firemen obviously confer on landowners economic and other benefits which are a recognized basis for imposing the common-law duty of reasonable care [citations, including Restatement of Torts, omitted], we would agree . . . that an action should lie against a landowner for failure to exercise reasonable care in the maintenance of his property resulting in the injury or death of a fireman rightfully on the premises, fighting the fire at a place where he might reasonably be expected to be. . . . [F]or the clarification of the law, insofar as any language contained [in Gibson v Leonard, n 15 supra] might be inconsistent with our interpretation of the common law in this case, it must be deemed to be overruled, along with any Appellate Court cases following the archaic lisensee concept.”); Meiers v Fred Koch Brewery, 229 NY 10, 15; 127 NE 491 (1920) (where a fireman fell into a coal hole in defendant’s driveway thereby receiving injuries, the court held that a license to enter premises involves permission by the owner and its acceptance by the licensee, so that a fireman who goes upon the premises in the line of his duty to extinguish a fire is not merely a bare licensee — "The plaintiff entered by a driveway prepared for the use of those who had business with the defendant. Such persons were at least invited to use it.”).

 2 Restatement Torts, 2d, § 345(2), p 227.
See Morin v Bell Court Condominium Ass’n, 25 Conn App 112, 123; 593 A2d 147 (1991) (Dupont, C.J., dissenting) ("If premises are held open for the use of the public, and a fireman or policeman enters on those premises at a time and place forseeable [sic] if he or she were a member of the public, the usual reasons for determining that the landowner could not have anticipated that presence due to the entrance at an unforseeable [sic] time or place vanish. See 2 Restatement [Second], Torts § 345, comment [e] on subsection [2], The plaintiff here was on a common stairway at 6 p.m. Neither the place nor the time of his injury was unusual.”); Fancil v QSE Foods, Inc, 60 Ill 2d 552, 556-557; 328 NE2d 538 (1975) (recognizes invitee/licensee distinction but concludes that a policeman who was fatally shot by a criminal when he entered a poorly lit store in the middle of the night was a licensee, and not an invitee).

 Id., § 345, pp 226-227.

 Id., § 345, illustration 5, p 229.
Professor Prosser anticipated the formulation in the Restatement when he wrote, "It may be suggested that a policeman calling during business hours at a store or an office to make an inquiry should be classed as an 'invitee,’ where if he comes at midnight, or enters by the fire escape, or in pursuit of a criminal, he is not.” Prosser, Business visitors and invitees, 26 Minn L R 573, 611 (1942).
In Restatement illustration 1, a fire fighter enters the building in the nighttime to extinguish a fire. He is injured by a collapse of a defective step on a back stairway that is not open to the public. The premises owner is not liable to the fireman although, in the exercise of reasonable care, he could have discovered the defect and repaired the step before the fire occurred. This illustration is analogous to Reetz.
A fire fighter who is injured in the open area of a department store when engaged in fighting a fire or a police officer who is injured in a shoot out with a bandit encounters a risk entirely different from the risk encountered by a customer. The customer will leave when the fire starts or duck when the shooting begins. The fire fighter, on the other hand, is obliged to remain and confront the danger of the fire, and the police officer is obliged to confront the risk of the shoot out.

 Some courts have moved away from the fireman’s rule by putting a gloss on statutory obligations.
See Dini, n 22 supra (where ordinances are general in their terms, they include firemen within their protection).
See also Krauth v Geller, 31 NJ 270, 274; 157 A2d 129 (1960) ("Thus it has been held that a fireman may recover if the injurious hazard was created in violation of statute or ordinance”).