Court Opinion

ID: 9735672
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:27:23.657646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:00.826754
License: Public Domain

Holbrook, Jr., P.J.
(dissenting). This appeal is before us on remand from an order of the Supreme Court, Bryant v Brannen, 431 Mich 864; 428 NW2d 346 (1988), vacating our previous unpublished opinion per curiam, decided February 19, 1988 (Docket No. 93843), in which we affirmed a *105judgment for injuries sustained from a gunshot inflicted by an employee of defendant. Having reconsidered this case pursuant to the remand direction, I would again affirm.
In our earlier decision, we concluded that the trial court correctly denied a motion for a directed verdict, holding that the evidence raised a jury question as to "whether defendant had a duty to take additional security measures, such as providing trained security personnel, to protect tenants from the criminal activities of third parties, [regardless of] whether those third parties were other tenants or intruders.” In its remand, the Supreme Court directed that we consider its decision in Williams v Cunningham Drug Stores, Inc, 429 Mich 495; 418 NW2d 381 (1988). In Williams, it was held "as a matter of law that the duty of reasonable care a merchant owes his invitees does not extend to providing armed, visible security guards to protect customers from the criminal acts of third parties.” Id., p 504. "[F]or reasons of public policy [the merchant] does not have the responsibility for providing police protection on his premises.” Id.
I begin with the unremarkable observation that Williams is factually distinguishable from the instant case. Williams involved a suit by a customer against a business invitor for a third-party assault committed on the latter’s premises. This case is a suit by a residential tenant against a landlord for an assault committed by a person who was both a tenant and an employee of the landlord. Thus, if Williams is understood to compel a different result than that effected by our earlier decision, it is by extension of its analogous principles to the tenant-landlord context. The underlying distinction is acknowledged by the Williams Court:
*106"We find that a landlord has more control in his relationship with his tenants than does a merchant in his relationship with his invitees. Should a dangerous condition exist in the common areas of a building which tenants must necessarily use, the tenants can voice their complaints to the landlord. Thus, in Samson v Saginaw Professional Building, Inc, 393 Mich 393, 408-411; 224 NW2d 843 (1975), we upheld a landlord’s duty to investigate and take available preventive measures when informed by his tenants that a possible dangerous condition exists in the common areas of the building, noting that the landlord’s duty may be slight. The relationship between a merchant and invitee, however, is distinguishable because the merchant does not have the same degree of control. When the dangerous condition to be guarded against is crime in the surrounding neighborhood, as it is in the present case, the merchant may be the target as often as his invitees. Therefore, there is little the merchant can do to remedy the situation, short of closing his business.” [Id., p 502, n 17.]
In Samson, supra, the Court held that a landlord of an office building owes a duty to insure that common areas are reasonably safe for tenants and their invitees. This duty was held to encompass the possibility of a criminal assault to the extent that it posed a foreseeable danger carrying an unreasonable risk of harm. Whether or not the landlord is negligent in anticipating and taking precautions against criminal assaults is a question for the jury.
Similarly, in Johnston v Harris, 387 Mich 569; 198 NW2d 409 (1972), the Court, in reversing a directed verdict for the defendant landlord, held that the plaintiffs proofs on a theory of inadequate lighting and unlocked doors were sufficient for a jury to decide whether the defendant’s omissions breached his duty of reasonable care to protect tenants from foreseeable risks. See also *107Aisner v Lafayette Towers, 129 Mich App 642; 341 NW2d 852 (1983), lv den 419 Mich 871 (1984).
The holdings in Samson and Johnston indicate that plaintiffs in this case presented a viable theory of recovery supported by sufficient proofs to support the verdict of the jury.1 I see no reason to hold that Williams implicitly overruled Samson and Johnston. Because the policy concerns underlying Williams are not applicable with the same force in the context of a residential tenancy and because a landlord retains greater control over an apartment building than does the merchant defendant in Williams, it is unnecessary to extend Williams this far. Although the Court in Williams cited Goldberg v Newark Housing Authority, 38 NJ 578; 186 A2d 291 (1962), where it was held that a municipal landlord has no duty to provide police protection to a large housing project, I do not believe that our Supreme Court thereby intended to intimate that Samson was suspect in principle. Rather the citation to Goldberg appears to be supportive of the limited proposition that a duty on merchants to provide security guards for their customers would be unfairly vague in specific application. Williams, supra, pp 502-503.
In our previous decision, we also held that defendant’s liability under a theory of respondeat supe*108rior for an employee’s intentional tort presented a jury question able to withstand a motion for a directed verdict. Essential to this holding was evidence that the employee, a handyman regarded by at least some tenants as the building manager, shot plaintiff Dale Bryant for perceived tampering with a lock on a door to a common area of the apartment building. The remand order of the Supreme Court indicates that it "should not be understood as precluding reconsideration of the issue involving the doctrine of respondeat superior should the Court of Appeals desire to do so.” 431 Mich 864-865. Upon reconsideration, I am not persuaded that our previous decision should be disturbed.
Although an employee’s intentional tort generally does not give rise to the employer’s vicarious liability, liability will attach if the commission of the tortious act occurred in the course and within the scope of employment. Burch v A & G Associates, Inc, 122 Mich App 798, 804; 333 NW2d 140 (1983), lv den 418 Mich 928 (1984). Thus, the employer is not liable if the tort is committed to gratify some purely personal desire. Martin v Jones, 302 Mich 355; 4 NW2d 686 (1942). However, a jury question is presented as to vicarious liability if there is evidence indicating that the employee acted to further the employer’s interests, Moffit v White Sewing Machine Co, 214 Mich 496, 500; 183 NW 198 (1921) (assault allegedly perpetrated in effort to coerce payment of bill owed to employer), or to protect the employer’s property, Cook v Michigan Central R Co, 189 Mich 456; 155 NW 541 (1915) (intruders shot by night watchman in the course of guarding railroad property). The evidence in this case presented a jury question.
Plaintiffs assailant, allegedly acting in overzealous furtherance of defendant’s interests, exercised *109more violence than defendant would undoubtedly have preferred, at least after the fact. Nevertheless, that defendant might not have approved or ratified such specific conduct will not necessarily serve to excuse him from vicarious liability. In Cook, supra, p 462, the Court noted:
Under such authority, if in the discharge of his duty [the employee] "kind of lost his head” and went further and used more force than he was authorized to use, the master is liable. . . . Robards v [P Bannon Sewer] Pipe Co, 130 Ky 380 (113 SW 429; 18 LRA [NS] 923; 132 Am St Rep 394 [1908]).
In the last-mentioned case the rule was stated to be that:
"The master who puts the servant in the place of trust or responsibility, or commits to him the management of his business or the care of his property, is justly held responsible when the servant, through lack of judgment or discretion, or from infirmity of temper, or under the influence of passion aroused by the circumstances and the occasion, goes beyond the strict line of his duty or authority, and inflicts an unjustifiable injury upon another.”
It was further said in this connection that:
"Furthermore, the law, under such circumstances, will not undertake to make any nice distinctions fixing with precision the line that separates the act of the servant from the act of the individual. When there is doubt, it will be resolved against the master, upon the ground that he set in motion the servant who committed the wrong.”
Thus, our earlier conclusion that the employee "although perhaps intemperate and exercising poor judgment, was acting in his employer’s interest when he sought to prevent tampering with the lock and, thereafter, shot Dale Bryant” appears, upon further consideration, to be a correct applica*110tion of the law. In reaching a contrary conclusion, the majority places much emphasis on the excessive violence of the employee’s response to perceived wrongdoing by plaintiff and the employee’s lack of express authorization to keep a weapon. Although undoubtedly these aspects have a significant bearing on the question presented, I would leave them for the jury to consider and decide. Whether or not a given state of affairs presents a jury question is often a matter of line drawing. The presence of these two factors, viewed against the overall calculus of surrounding facts and circumstances, does not lead, at least in my way of thinking, to an ineluctable conclusion that the case must be decided as a matter of law. I cannot draw the line in the manner suggested by the majority and would leave the jury’s verdict undisturbed.

 The majority observes enigmatically:
Nonetheless, we begin our analysis by noting that Blakely shot plaintiff while they were in their respective apartments. Hence, a common area under the landlord’s control was involved only to the extent that a bullet flew through the common hallway. Given this fact, we believe that defendant did not have any liability at all.
Insofar as the legal relationship between a tenant and a landlord is concerned, the foregoing observation would not appear to affect the application of principles of premises liability. In a situation where a tenant is fired upon from outside his apartment unit, as the extension of a dispute in an open doorway to a common area, the relative placement of tenant and assailant has little relevance to controlling negligence concepts, e.g., duty, standard of care, proximate causation.