Court Opinion

ID: 9709381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:46:24.035269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:48.245836
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE CAHILL, concurring in part and dissenting in part: A passenger quarrels with a taxi driver on a snowy morning.. In a fit of uncourtly temper the driver orders the woman out of his taxi at a safe place, but short of the home where he promised to take her. Forced to walk, the woman sets out for home, but .slips and falls on a natural accumulation of ice and snow. The majority recognizes that before the issues of negligence and proximate cause are put in play a court must find that a legally sufficient duty exists. It also recognizes that an element of that duty is foreseeability, which requires us to consider: the likelihood of injury, the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the risk, the consequences of placing the burden on the defendant, and the public policy and social requirements of the time and community. The majority undertakes its analysis against this background and concludes that while the high degree of care imposed on the taxi driver as a common carrier was extinguished when the plaintiff was ejected at a place safe for the moment, a residual duty of ordinary care remained. I concur. (See Jones v. Chicago & Northwestern Transportation Co. (1990), 206 Ill. App. 3d 136, 563 N.E.2d 1120.) The taxi driver, after all, agreed to take the plaintiff home. That part of his duty could not be discharged by forcing her out of his taxi at any safe place he chose. The majority then reasons that, given the Snowy conditions surrounding her safe place for the moment, it was reasonably foreseeable that she might slip and fall as she continued her journey. I disagree. I see no reasonably close connection between the wrongful discharge of this passenger, and the harm it originally threatened, with her subsequent fall. To be sure, the weather was what one expects in the dead of a Chicago winter, but the area where she left the taxi was safe, the cleared driveway of a gas station. There is no evidence in the record that the neighborhood or hour was dangerous, or that the weather was so severe that exposure to it alone was a hazard. That might yield a different result. But the likelihood (more of that word in a moment) that she might fall on a natural accumulation of ice and snow was simply not within the scope of foreseeable risk. If we look at the elements of foreseeability, I am able to find only one that clearly applies to this case: the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the risk. That burden could have been met if the taxi driver had done what he had promised to do and driven the passenger home. The likelihood of injury is another element of the test. A likelihood is not a certainty. The dictionary calls it a probability. (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1310 (1986).) Under the facts in this case I am afraid the majority defines it as a possibility. There remain two elements to be considered: the consequences of placing the burden on the defendant, and the public policy and social requirements of the time and the community. Our supreme court has defined the burden of a common carrier: it is relieved when the passenger is discharged in a place of safety. The majority now holds that if the discharge is wrongful, liability may remain until she reaches her destination, depending upon what happens along the way. Whether what happens along the way will be traceable to the defendant is a question for the jury to decide. The consequences for common carriers and anyone else who offers somebody a ride that is wrongfully interrupted should be obvious. I cannot find an Illinois case that goes as far as the majority goes today. We can conjure scenarios as suggested earlier where the ejectment of a passenger at a place other than where she intended to go is so fraught with palpable risks foreseeable to the reasonable mind and eye that the common carrier will be seen to have breached his duty of a high degree of care, to say nothing of the duty of ordinary care. The ill-tempered bus driver who ejects noisy children miles short of the schoolhouse is not absolved because the walkway is safe — if the temperature is 30 degrees below zero. But that is not our case. Because I would grant summary judgment for the defendant, I would not reach the issue of whether the natural accumulation rule shields those without premises liability, nor is there any reason to address the wilful and wanton count. I respectfully dissent.