Court Opinion

ID: 9558798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:17:04.290289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:36.143266
License: Public Domain

*524Six, J.,
dissenting: I concur in the dissenting opinion of Justice McFarland. I write separately to state why I believe the current law of premises liability should be retained and once again reaffirmed.
Plaintiff Jones’ petition alleged that “defendants’ actions constituted wanton conduct and active negligence” because of the way the Hansens positioned their pictures, the failure to warn Jones about the stairwell, failure to block the stairwell, and failure to adequately light the room. The record does not contain an amended petition or motion to amend the petition. The Hansens answered Jones’ claims by denying the allegations of wanton conduct and active negligence. Discovery proceeded on the wanton conduct theory selected by Jones and identified by her allegations.
The Hansens moved for summary judgment because the undisputed facts neither supported an allegation of wanton conduct nor showed that Jones was injured during an activity, as in Bowers v. Ottenad, 240 Kan. 208, 729 P.2d 1103 (1986). The Hansens contended that under Kansas law, a social guest claiming an injury resulting from a condition of her host’s premises was entitled to recover only on proof of willful or wanton conduct.
In her response to defendants’ summary judgment motions, Jones argued that the Hansens were “guilty of wanton conduct” because the bookcase hid the stairway from view, the lighting was kept “low as to obscure the existence of the stairway,” the pictures were hung evenly over the stairway rather than in a descending way to indicate the presence of the stairway, and Mrs. Hansen invited Jones to view the paintings and did not warn Jones or provide adequate lighting. Jones argued, in general, that summary judgment is not usually appropriate in negligence actions. Jones acknowledged that she was a licensee and at least implicitly acknowledged that she must show wanton conduct in order to recover. She argued primarily that a plaintiff need not prove a defendant’s willingness to injure in order to establish wanton conduct.
The Hansens’ reply memorandum addressed the propriety of summary judgment in negligence actions and the duty owed to a licensee under Kansas law. The only mention below of Jones’ appellate contention that Kansas law should be changed is in the *525oral argument on the summary judgment motion. The tangential reference in Jones’ argument was as follows: “We think . . . it’s time that the court — higher court needs to consider changing and adopting the Restatement of Torts, which is a much more realistic view of the way the world works.”
Although counsel told the trial court during oral argument that he thought Kansas law should be changed, I question whether the issue was preserved for appeal. The trial court granted summary judgment based on its conclusion that Jones had to prove the injury occurred during an activity on the Hansens’ property or as a result of willful and wanton conduct. The trial court did, however, as the majority notes, tell plaintiff, “You’ll have an opportunity to argue the policy decisions to the higher court.”
Was counsel’s reference during oral argument sufficient to preserve the premises liability classification issue? In order for an appellate court to determine an issue, the issue must have been raised and determined at the trial court level. Farm Bureau Mut. Ins. Co. v. Old Hickory Cas. Ins. Co., 248 Kan. 657, 662, 810 P.2d 283 (1991). In Farm Bureau, we declined to rule on an issue raised in, but not determined by, the district court. Jones’ assertion at oral argument that the law should be changed is not sufficient to preserve the issue for appeal. In Enlow v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 249 Kan. 732, 822 P.2d 617 (1991), we declined to consider the appellant’s res ipsa loquitur claim because she raised it for the first time at oral argument on defendant’s motion to dismiss. Enlow neither included the res ipsa theory in the pretrial order nor requested a jury instruction. 249 Kan. at 737-38. Similarly, in the instant case, Jones raised the premises liability classification issue only at oral argument. She did not reference the issue in her petition or argue it in her written reply to defendants’ motion for summary judgment. She cited no authority to the trial court, nor did she request a ruling on the issue by the trial court. Under Enlow, Jones has not preserved the issue for appeal. In the case at bar, there is no indication in the record that Jones questioned established premises liability law prior to oral argument on the Hansens’ summary judgment motion.
Our jurisdiction is “to correct, modify, vacate or reverse any act, order or judgment of a district court or court of appeals in *526order to assure that any such act, order or judgment is just, legal and free of abuse.” K.S.A. 1992 Supp. 60-2101(b). We do not have a district court decision to review with respect to the change in premises liability law briefed and argued cn appeal. The entire case proceeded in the trial court on the theory that the Hansens’ wanton misconduct allegedly caused Jones’ injury. The majority relies on Board of Sedgwick County Comm’rs v. Kiser Living Trust, 250 Kan. 84, Syl. ¶ 8, 825 P.2d 130 (1992), reasoning that an appellate court may consider an issue not presented to the trial court when the issue is a question of law that may be decided on established facts. The facts in Kiser which form the basis for syllabus ¶ 8 involved a matter decided by the trial court, i.e. an award of attorney fees. See 250 Kan. at 105. We interpreted on appeal K.S.A. 26-509, the statute the trial court had relied on in allowing attorney fees in a bench trial. In Kiser; the county had not objected in the trial court to fees for the landowner’s attorneys. The objection came on appeal. We entertained the issue of interpreting K.S.A. 26-509. The factual distinction between Kiser and the case at bar is that the statute we interpreted in Kiser was used by the trial court as the basis for the attorney fee award. In the case at bar, the status of established premises liability law was never presented to the trial court. In my view, something more than counsel’s wishful reference for a policy change made in oral argument at the end of trial court proceedings is required to place an issue before this court.
We welcome amicus curiae briefs as valuable assets in our appellate work. Experience demonstrates that interested associations frequently move for permission to file as amici curiae under Rule 6.06 (1993 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 29). No such motions have been filed in the case at bar. The majority’s decision will arrive as a surprise. Neither the pleadings below nor the decision of the trial court involved a challenge to our established law of premises liability. We should have invited comment from interested associations alerting such associations that the court was entertaining the issue of a policy change in premises liability law.
The majority’s new premises liability standard is prospective as of the date of this opinion. The majority’s opinion, except as to the instant parties, should carry an effective date later than the date of the opinion. When the court departs from the rule *527of stare decisis, the application of the new rule should not result in hardship to those who have relied upon prior decisions of the court. Carroll v. Kittle, 203 Kan. 841, 851, 457 P.2d 21 (1969).
The United States Supreme Court recently revisited the role of stare decisis speaking through Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. -, 120 L. Ed. 2d 674, 112 S. Ct. 2791 (1992). Selected comments from the stare decisis analysis in Casey are instructive in evaluating the efficacy of the majority’s rationale for overruling our premises liability law.
The Supreme Court stated:
“[W]hen this Court reexamines a prior holding, its judgment is customarily informed by a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case. Thus, for example, we may ask whether the rule has proved to be intolerable simply in defying practical workability, Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U.S. 111, 116, 15 L. Ed. 2d 194, 86 S. Ct. 258 (1965); whether the rule is subject to a kind of reliance that would lend a special hardship to the consequences of overruling and add inequity to the cost of repudiation, e.g., United States v. Title Ins. & Trust Co., 265 U.S. 472, 486, 68 L. Ed. 1110, 44 S. Ct. 621 (1924); whether related principles of law have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine, see Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U.S. 164, 173-174, 105 L. Ed. 2d 132, 109 S. Ct. 2363 (1989); or whether facts have so changed or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application or justification, e.g., Burnet [v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393,] 412, 76 L. Ed. 815, 52 S. Ct. 443 [1932] (Brandeis, J., dissenting).” 120 L. Ed. 2d at 700.
“[A] decision to overrule should rest on some special reason over and above the belief that a prior case was wrongly decided. See, e.g., Mitchell v. W. T. Grant, 416 U.S. 600, 636, 40 L. Ed. 2d 406, 94 S. Ct. 1895 (1974) (Stewart, J., dissenting) (‘A basic change in the law upon a ground no firmer than a change in our membership invites the popular misconception that this institution is little different from the two political branches of the Government. No misconception could do more lasting injury to this Court and to the system of law which it is our abiding mission to serve’); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 677, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 84 A.L.R. 2d 933 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting).” 120 L. Ed. 2d at 706.+
“There is a limit to the amount of error that can plausibly be imputed to prior courts. If that limit should be exceeded, disturbance of prior rulings would be taken as evidence that justifiable reexamination of principle had given way to drives for particular results in the short term. The legitimacy *528of the Court would fade with the frequency of its vacillation.” 120 L. Ed. 2d at 708.
“The promise of constancy, once given, binds its maker for as long as the power to stand by the decision survives and the understanding of the issue has not changed so fundamentally as to render the commitment obsolete.” 120 L. Ed. 2d at 709.
The majority opinion candidly observes: “A majority of jurisdictions still retain the common-law classifications and duties arising from those classifications.” Overruling established premises liability law is not justified, particularly when this court discards a legal concept of common-law classification held by a majority of jurisdictions and endorses a minority view.
The trial court in the case at bar should be affirmed.
Lockett, J., joins the foregoing dissenting opinions.