Court Opinion

ID: 9489511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:17:30.831285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:34.246340
License: Public Domain

WILKINSON, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The district court properly granted summary judgment to a hotel whose guest suffered injury not from any fire but from the exertion of evacuating a building in response to a fire alarm.
The hotel should not be faulted for having a fire alarm that actually worked. Under the majority’s rule, the chief way a hotel can protect against liability is to have fire alarm systems that are difficult to activate. This poses the danger, of course, that hotel fires will cause scores of casualties and that guests will be trapped in these tall buildings or otherwise asphyxiated in their rooms.
It is better to follow a rule that does not equate proximate cause with cause in fact. See Peterson v. Underwood, 258 Md. 9, 264 A.2d 851, 855 (1970). It is entirely foreseeable that the negligence of the kitchen crew in failing to turn on the exhaust fans could harm people in the vicinity with fumes. It is too attenuated to hold that the negligent failure to turn on an exhaust fan would then, lead to activation of a fire alarm which would then cause a guest exiting in response to that alarm to suffer a collapsed lung from the exertion.
Fire alarms are a necessity of modern life. By faulting (or at least denying summary judgment to) building owners for having alarms that do the job they are supposed to do, my good colleagues create a dangerous set of incentives. Tort law should promote public safety, not undermine it. I would affirm the judgment of the district court.