Court Opinion

ID: 9748353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:00:26.795989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:34.617591
License: Public Domain

ACREE, Judge,
concurring:
Respectfully, I write separately because I believe it important to consider Kentucky River Medical Center v. McIntosh, 319 S.W.3d 385 (Ky.2010). The case sub judi-ce demonstrates that summary judgment is still available in proper cases despite the fact that analysis under McIntosh does not stop with a determination that a hazard is open and obvious.
“[T]o allow known or obvious conditions to always absolve land possessors from any liability ‘would be to resurrect contributory negligence[.]’ ” McIntosh, 319 S.W.3d at 391. With “[t]he focus on foreseeability!,]” our Supreme Court embraced the reasoning underlying Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A(1) cmt. f (1965) that “sometimes ‘the possessor has reason to expect that the invitee’s attention may be distracted, so that he will not discover what is obvious, or will forget what he has discovered, or fail to protect himself against it.’ ” Id., quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A(1) cmt. f. The Supreme Court thereby recognized what it refers to as a plaintiffs “defense of foreseeable distraction” that undermines the formerly determinative open-and-obvious doctrine. Id. at 394.
In McIntosh, the record demonstrated that the plaintiff (an emergency medical technician moving a patient from an emergency vehicle to the hospital’s emergency room) was foreseeably distracted from the open and obvious hazard of an uneven curb between the ambulance dock and the emergency room doors. Id. Noting it was “important to stress the context in which McIntosh sustained her injury!,]” the Court emphasized that her “dire need to rush critically ill patients through the emergency room entrance should be self-*478evident”; such a distraction was unquestionably foreseeable by the hospital which had every “reason to expect that the invitee will proceed to encounter the known or obvious danger because ... the advantages of doing so [preserving health and saving lives] would outweigh the apparent risk.” Id.- (Internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Consequently, in McIntosh, “the plaintiff had the defense of foreseeable distraction, as she was attending her patient.” Id. Mazie Jones had no such defense. Whereas McIntosh’s focus was properly and fore-seeably on something other than the hazard, Jones’ focus, necessarily, should have been on the hazard itself. Obviously, it was not. Jones presented no evidence whatsoever that she was distracted from her “duty to act reasonably to ensure her own safety, heightened by her familiarity with the location and the arguably open and obvious nature of the danger.” Id. at 395.
Because this case- is clearly distinguishable from McIntosh, I concur.