Court Opinion

ID: 9576296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:23:00.427455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:01.940068
License: Public Domain

ANDREWS, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
Martha Beach and Sofia Deglel alleged they suffered physical injuries and physical and mental pain and suffering when an elevator malfunctioned while they were using it to exit the office building where their employer leased space from the building owner, B. F. Saul Property Company. They sued Saul Property alleging that it negligently failed to protect them as passengers in the elevator by *698adequately maintaining or repairing the elevator to keep it in safe operating condition. The trial court correctly directed a verdict in favor of Saul Property at the close of the plaintiffs’ evidence because Beach and Deglel failed to produce any evidence that Saul Property was negligent.
At the end of the work day, Beach and Deglel left their office on the thirteenth floor of the sixteen story office building and entered the freight elevator to descend and exit the building. There is no evidence as to why they chose to use the freight elevator rather than any of the other four passenger elevators in the building, which Beach said were operating and being used by other office workers. Nothing, however, shows that office workers were not invited to use the freight elevator. There is no evidence that the freight elevator was malfunctioning in any observable manner when the door opened and Beach and Deglel entered. According to Beach and Deglel, after they entered the elevator, they pushed buttons to go down to different levels, the door shut, and, instead of going down, the elevator went up to the fifteenth or sixteenth floor. The elevator made a banging sound, then bounced and shook them in a jarring manner as it made metal clanging noises while continuing to go up and down. Beach and Deglel said they were entrapped in the elevator under these circumstances for an hour and twenty-five minutes until elevator maintenance, building security, or paramedics were able to get them out of the elevator on the ninth floor.
As the owner of the office building, Saul Property had a nondel-egable duty to exercise the same extraordinary diligence as a common carrier to protect the passengers invited to use the elevators in its building. Gaffney v. EQK Realty Investors, 213 Ga. App. 653-655 (445 SE2d 771) (1994). The record shows that Saul Property entered into a contract providing for ThyssenKrupp Elevator Corporation to maintain and repair the elevators in the building.7 The fact that Saul Property’s duty to protect the passengers in its elevators was nondel-egable did not prevent it from contracting with an independent elevator expert, ThyssenKrupp, to perform the maintenance and repairs necessary to keep the elevators reasonably safe; rather the nondelegable duty means that Saul Property cannot avoid its duty by contracting with a third party, and that it remained vicariously liable for any negligence by ThyssenKrupp. Id. In general, the duty to exercise “extraordinary diligence” means the exercise of “extreme care and caution which very prudent and thoughtful persons exercise under the same or similar circumstances,” the absence of which is *699termed “slight negligence.” OCGA § 51-1-3. Accordingly, Saul Property could be held liable on the basis of its own slight negligence which proximately caused the injuries to Beach and Deglel, or on the basis of its vicarious liability for slight negligence on the part of ThyssenKrupp which proximately caused the injuries to Beach and Deglel.
In the absence of any negligence, Saul Property was entitled to a directed verdict. “[A] directed verdict is appropriate only if there is no conflict in the evidence as to any material issue and the evidence introduced, construed most favorably to the party opposing the motion, demands a particular verdict. OCGA § 9-11-50 (a).” St. Paul Mercury Ins. Co. v. Meeks, 270 Ga. 136, 137 (508 SE2d 646) (1998). Under this standard, where the record is devoid of any evidence to support an essential element of the nonmovant’s claim, no factual issue exists and a directed verdict is appropriate. Parsells v. Orkin Exterminating Co., 178 Ga. App. 51, 52 (342 SE2d 13) (1986). Construing the record in favor of Beach and Deglel, the trial court properly granted Saul Property’s motion for a directed verdict because there is no evidence that Saul Property was itself slightly negligent in maintaining and repairing the elevator at issue, and no evidence that Saul Property was vicariously liable for slight negligence by ThyssenKrupp in maintaining and repairing the elevator.
“This Court has long recognized that mechanical devices such as [elevators] get out of working order, and sometimes become dangerous and cause injury without negligence on the part of anyone. This evidence alone without any showing of slight negligence, does not create a triable issue.” (Citation and punctuation omitted; emphasis in original.) Sparks v. MARTA, 223 Ga. App. 768, 770 (478 SE2d 923) (1996). It follows that the duty to exercise extraordinary diligence to protect passengers on an elevator does not make the elevator owner an insurer of the safety of its passengers, and does not make the owner liable for injury caused by the mechanical malfunction of an elevator in the absence of at least slight negligence. Id. at 768. We held in Sparks, supra, at 769 and in Brady v. Elevator Specialists, 287 Ga. App. 304, 308 (653 SE2d 59) (2007), that extraordinary diligence and the absence of slight negligence can be demonstrated by evidence of a regular program of maintenance and repair for the elevator showing that the elevator was operating properly prior to the malfunction which caused the injury. When the evidence shows that the owner has taken reasonable measures to keep the elevator maintained and repaired, and there is no evidence that the owner actually knew about or should have reasonably anticipated the elevator malfunction which caused the injury, there is an absence of even slight negligence and the owner is not liable for injury caused by the mechanical malfunction. Id.; Sparks, 223 Ga. App. at 769-770.
*700In the present case, the record includes evidence of a program of regular elevator inspection, maintenance and repair carried out by ThyssenKrupp pursuant to its contract with Saul Property. The evidence shows that for the 53-week period up to and including the day of the malfunction at issue, ThyssenKrupp performed scheduled preventative maintenance on all the elevators in the building on 63 occasions, including a regular weekly maintenance schedule plus other scheduled maintenance. The evidence shows unscheduled service calls over this period in which ThyssenKrupp responded to and fixed reported problems on all five of the elevators in the building. There is no evidence of any unresolved problems with any of the elevators in the building leading up to and including the day of the malfunction at issue. The last reported problem relating to the freight elevator used by Beach and Deglel was reported and resolved two months prior to the malfunction at issue. There is no evidence that the amount of elevator malfunctions or repairs for the five elevators in the building exceeded what would be normally expected. In fact, Saul Property’s building manager testified that the elevator repair costs at the building were not outside the norm. Two days before the malfunction at issue, ThyssenKrupp inspected and performed eight hours of scheduled maintenance on the elevators in the building. Just hours prior to the malfunction at issue (on the morning of the malfunction), the elevators were inspected by State inspectors. There is no evidence that any problems were discovered with any of the elevators as a result of these inspections. There is no evidence that Saul Property failed to report elevator malfunctions to ThyssenKrupp, and no evidence that any of the regularly scheduled maintenance or other repairs by ThyssenKrupp were not properly performed. Beach testified that she had never previously experienced and was not aware of any elevator in the building malfunctioning by bouncing up and down like the freight elevator in the present incident. Deglel said that, although there were general complaints about the elevators in the building, she was not aware of prior complaints made to the building manager or to elevator maintenance. Although Beach and Deglel testified along with other coworkers that elevators in the building malfunctioned in various ways, there is no evidence that any malfunctions reported were not responded to and fixed. Moreover, the malfunction at issue occurred on the freight elevator, one of five elevators in the building. None of the testimony given by Beach, Deglel, or other co-workers about elevator malfunctions which occurred prior to the malfunction at issue specified that the malfunctions occurred on the freight elevator. In Peterson Properties Corp. v. Finch, 235 Ga. App. 86, 87 (508 SE2d 463) (1998), we concluded that general testimony from office workers that elevators malfunctioned in a building with multiple eleva*701tors failed to show that prior malfunctions occurred on the elevator at issue, and failed to support a claim that the owner should have anticipated the malfunction at issue.
The record shows that Saul Property (and ThyssenKrupp with which it contracted to maintain and repair the elevator) took reasonable steps to keep the freight elevator in safe operating condition, and that the elevator was operating properly before the mechanical malfunction occurred. Because there was no evidence that Saul Property knew about or should have reasonably anticipated and prevented the malfunction at issue, Saul Property was not negligent in any degree; was not liable for any resulting injury; and was entitled to a directed verdict.
Beach and Deglel claim that Saul Property violated OCGA § 8-2-106, and that this entitled them to an evidentiary presumption precluding the directed verdict. The provisions of OCGA § 8-2-106 require that the owner of an elevator report an elevator accident “involving personal injury” to the appropriate inspection authority by noon on the next work day; that the elevator be removed from service at the time of the accident; and that the elevator not be repaired, altered, or placed back in service until inspected by the appropriate authority. In Lane v. Montgomery Elevator Co., 225 Ga. App. 523, 525 (484 SE2d 249) (1997), we found that, if a violation of OCGA § 8-2-106 was proved, “then such conduct would constitute a form of spoliation of evidence, because by working on the elevator, the evidence would have been tampered with, altered or destroyed.” If such spoliation occurred, then a rebuttable presumption arises that the altered or destroyed evidence favors the party injured in the elevator accident. Id. It was undisputed that Saul Property did not report the malfunction pursuant to OCGA § 8-2-106, and that ThyssenKrupp (pursuant to its contract with Saul Property) inspected the elevator the day after the malfunction and placed the elevator back in service. Accordingly, Beach and Deglel claim that they were entitled to a rebuttable presumption that evidence of the mechanical cause of the malfunction was destroyed or altered by ThyssenKrupp’s inspection; that the evidence was favorable to them; and that this evidentiary presumption precluded the grant of a directed verdict in favor of Saul Property.
This claim fails for two reasons. First, the trial court rejected the spoliation claim by finding that Saul Property did not violate the reporting provisions of OCGA § 8-2-106 because the evidence did not show that Saul Property had notice that the elevator accident involved personal injury to Beach or Deglel. We review a trial court’s denial of a motion for spoliation sanctions for an abuse of discretion. R. A. Siegel Co. v. Bowen, 246 Ga. App. 177, 180-182 (539 SE2d 873) (2000). In considering a motion for spoliation sanctions, the trial *702court makes necessary factual findings. Bouve & Mohr, LLC v. Banks, 274 Ga. App. 758, 762 (618 SE2d 650) (2005). We accept the trial court’s factual findings on this issue where there is any evidence to support them. See Addington v. Anneewakee, Inc., 204 Ga. App. 521, 522 (420 SE2d 60) (1992) (trial court is trier of fact in discovery disputes, and court’s factual finding will not be reversed if there is any evidence to support it).
Evidence showed that Saul Property’s building manager was notified by building security that Beach and Deglel had been checked out by paramedics after the entrapment in the elevator and that there was “no problem” and “they were fine” and they were going home. Beach testified that she did not report any injury to the paramedics. She testified that, after she got out of the elevator and was checked out by paramedics, co-workers took her back to her office in the building where “they got wet towels and then calmed us down,” and she then drove home. Although a building security officer thought Beach may have had a stroke or heart condition, there was no evidence to confirm this, and Beach denied it. Beach first sought medical attention five or six days after the incident. Deglel testified that, after getting out of the elevator, she was seen by the paramedics but received no medical treatment. Deglel was confronted on cross-examination with testimony she gave in a prior deposition in which she admitted that paramedics asked her if she was okay and she responded “yeah.” Cross-examination also showed that, when Deglel was asked in the prior deposition if she reported any injuries to the paramedics, she responded, “I don’t remember.” After seeing the paramedics, Deglel testified that she went with Beach to their office where co-workers calmed them down with wet towels. She said her fiancé (now husband) then picked her up from work, they drove to a Taco Bell restaurant where they stayed for about an hour and then went home. Deglel testified that she sought no medical treatment until more than a month after the incident. Because there was evidence in the record to support the trial court’s factual finding that Saul Property had no notice that the elevator accident involved “personal injury” to Beach or Deglel, and that there was no violation of the reporting provisions of OCGA § 8-2-106, this Court is required to uphold it on appeal.
Second, even if Saul Property violated the reporting provisions of OCGA § 8-2-106, and Beach and Deglel were entitled to a rebuttable presumption that ThyssenKrupp’s inspection destroyed or altered evidence showing the mechanical cause of the elevator malfunction, no presumed malfunction could have been favorable evidence precluding the grant of the directed verdict in favor of Saul Property. The directed verdict was properly granted on the basis that there was no evidence that Saul Property was directly or vicariously *703liable for any negligence in the maintenance or repair of the elevator, and the mere fact that an elevator mechanically malfunctions is not evidence of negligence. Because on the present record Saul Property was entitled to a directed verdict regardless of the mechanical cause of the malfunction, the spoliation issue was irrelevant. Peterson Properties Corp., 235 Ga. App. at 87-88.
Decided March 30, 2010
Reconsideration denied April 14, 2010.
Joe A. Weeks, for appellants.
Joseph D. Perrotta, for appellee.
I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Judge Mikell joins in this dissent.

 Beach and Deglel initially sued both Saul Property and ThyssenKrupp, but they subsequently obtained an order dismissing ThyssenKrupp from the case without prejudice.