Court Opinion

ID: 9780706
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 02:29:38.757248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:11.294468
License: Public Domain

STOWERS, Justice,
dissenting.
I disagree with the court's opinion. I would affirm the superior court's dismissal in favor of Wendy's. I do not believe that *1203Wendy's duty extends to Mickelsen, an innocent person with no connection to Wendy's (that is, he was not a customer of Wendy's but merely an innocent person driving past the restaurant on a public highway when another person made an illegal turn in front of him, causing the collision and his death). I also think that Wendy's has no duty to prevent a person from making an illegal turn in his wrongful attempt to shorteut into Wendy's parking lot. To extend a business's duty to the civreurastances of this case will vastly expand the potential lability and attendant costs to businesses all over Alaska. This places an intolerable burden not only on those businesses, but on society at large, because the costs of this greatly expanded liability will surely be passed down to the people in the form of higher costs for goods and services, higher insurance costs, and increased litigation.1
I also believe that our current framework for a landowner's duty is adequately set out in Schumacher v. City & Borough of Yakutat, where we stated:
In essence, Schumacher is arguing that this court should impose Hability on anyone who is aware of another's self-destructive behavior, has any ability to prevent that behavior, and fails to save the injured party from his or her own conduct. Such a holding would transform the law of negli-genee from a means whereby a person may recover for losses caused by the danger which another's unreasonable behavior ere-ated, to a mechanism permitting persons injured by their own conduct to compel any who failed to prevent that conduct to share in the burden of their negligence. We decline to permit such a result.[2]
Of course, Schumacher is distinguishable in that, in Schumacher, it was the negligent child who caused the injury to himself, not a third-party scofflaw. But the underlying principle remains the same-the court should not impose liability on the owner of property where the property owner fails to prevent the unlawful behavior of a third party, whose unlawful behavior occurs off the premises, and eauses injury off the premises. The court's holding today transforms the law of negligence into a mechanism permitting a party injured by a third party's illegal and negligent conduct to compel an adjacent property owner who failed to prevent the illegal conduct to share in the burden of the seofflaw's illegal conduct.

. Such litigation would also likely be hugely wasteful. Now that the case is remanded for further proceedings, I assume that the first thing Wendy's will do is file a third-party complaint for apportionment of fault against Hayward, the driver who made the illegal turn and caused the collision. At trial, the jury will be asked to apportion fault, and it is entirely foreseeable that fault will be apportioned wholly or in very large percentage to Hayward. Businesses like Wendy's will bear the costs of litigating cases like this one, but there will be little likelihood of compensation for those who are injured or killed by the illegal acts of people like Hayward, the scofflaw driver in this case. Thus, the court's ruling will not advance the interests of injured innocents (if anything, if my prognostication is accurate, the innocent plaintiff will likely end up not only not receiving compensation from Wendy's, but will owe Wendy's its costs and attorney's fees if Wendy's prevails on its apportionment of fault defense). All the court's ruling will accomplish is to increase unnecessary costs on society.

. 946 P.2d 1255, 1257 (Alaska 1997) (emphasis deleted).