Court Opinion

ID: 9722536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:38:23.71701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:36.732718
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GEIGER, specially concurring: I agree with the majority that the trial court here erroneously granted the City a directed verdict. I do not, however, subscribe to the majority’s reasoning to reach that conclusion. The majority’s analysis depends upon Dinges v. Gabardi (1990), 202 Ill. App. 3d 732. Considering the far-reaching implications of Binges (see Binges, 202 Ill. App. 3d at 738-40 (Geiger, J., dissenting)), and the presence of a compelling alternative basis for reaching the result in this decision, I would not base my decision on the City’s receipt of notice of the existence of a hazardous condition and its subsequent failure to erect a barricade. As the majority here modifies and applies Binges, the defendant City faces liability for an intoxicated driver’s collision with a dumpster. That liability is despite the City’s failing to ever warn of the hazard and is without regard for City action in creating the hazard. Under the majority’s analysis, the potential liability here is premised on the City’s failure to warn motorists of the dumpster placement, and it arises because another motorist’s earlier dumpster collision gave notice that a dangerous condition existed. Unlike the majority, I do not consider notice to be the critical fact in this case. Rather, I would rely upon the evidence here that the City took an active role leading up to the accident at issue. In this case, the City was not merely a passive body failing to provide warning for a condition that arose, without its control, on a City roadway. Rather, there was evidence that the City acted to create the condition: it ordered dumpsters and specified where they should be placed. The City is, of course, subject to a general duty to exercise ordinary care in maintaining its property in a reasonably safe condition. (See Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 85, par. 3 — 102.) In this case, there is evidence that the City violated that duty by creating and controlling the hazard at issue. Under these circumstances, I would find that despite the fact that the City did not undertake to warn of a traffic hazard, its general section 3 — 104 immunity (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 85, par. 3 — 104) is not determinative. The City’s exposure to liability properly results not from its failure to warn of a hazard, but from its active role in creating the hazard, in violation of its duty to maintain safe conditions.