Court Opinion

ID: 9603337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:05:11.997376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:10.886655
License: Public Domain

Banke, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur with the legal principles applied by the majority in this case. However, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that this is a “plain and indisputable” case where the court may adjudicate the issues of negligence and proximate cause.
The only evidence of record regarding any correlation between accumulated newspapers and the likelihood of burglary is the deposition testimony of a crime prevention specialist, who opined that an accumulation of three or more newspapers would likely indicate to a burglar that no one was at home and thus increase the risk of burglary. The obvious corollary is that fewer papers on the lawn would not increase the normal risk of burglary. Nevertheless, the majority concludes, as a matter of law, that the accumulation of at most two weekend papers so increased the risk of burglary as to sever any causal connection between the appellee’s continuing, unsolicited deliveries and the criminal act. It may be that a jury would not accept the experienced opinion of the crime prevention specialist, but that testimony certainly presented a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of a causal relationship between the appellee’s conduct and the burglary, and the trial court improperly invaded the province of the jury by granting summary judgment. The appellant’s failure to stop the weekend deliveries at most raises an issue of contributory negligence for the jury to resolve.
I also find unwarranted the majority’s conclusion that the burglary was not reasonably foreseeable absent notice to the appellee that the house would be unoccupied. The crux of the appellant’s complaint is that at some point the appellee, like the burglar, had noticed by the accumulation of newspapers that no one was at home. Whether the burglary was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the appellee’s conduct and whether the appellant was contributorily *702negligent were jury questions, and inappropriate for summary adjudication. Consequently, I would reverse the grant of summary judgment.
I am authorized to state that Judge Pope joins in this dissent.