Court Opinion

ID: 9584403
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:47:49.65685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:44.187770
License: Public Domain

Saad, P.J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent. As is common knowledge, there are many places in any city where pedestrians are clearly at risk if a reckless driver veers off the road. This is true whether one waits at a comer for a light to change or traffic to clear, waits at a bus stop or cab stand, stops to buy a paper from a paper stand or a hot dog from a vendor, or makes a telephone call from any number of locations. Most people would be very surprised to learn, as I am today, that the hot dog vendor, newspaper stand owner or telephone company is responsible in damages if an inexperienced, intoxicated, criminally *627reckless driver injures someone who stops to use the vendor’s services. Though it is virtually impossible to predict (much less guard against) the wildly erratic driving exemplified by Ruby Greer,1 my colleagues in the majority impose such an unrealistic duty upon Michigan Bell.
To be sure, the accident was tragic, but so too is the law that is made today thereby proving the old maxim — bad acts make bad law. Not only was the telephone booth in question clearly a reasonable distance from the streets, but plaintiffs’ counsel conceded during oral argument2 that there had never been a car accident involving this telephone stand in its history.3 That there were car accidents in the vicinity is not terribly relevant because one would be hard pressed to find a major intersection in a city free of *628car accidents. What is troubling is the majority’s unfortunate use of such common-place data to justify the imposition of a duty that, to my mind, violates, among other things, common sense. While I can understand the compassion that may motivate the majority, nonetheless, to shift the responsibility for this tragedy from where it truly belongs — on the impecunious criminal wrongdoer — to the innocent defendant with resources does violence to the law of negligence, which only imposes reasonable duties,4 and to the law regarding causation,5 which mandates the sensible conclusion that Ms. Greer caused this accident, not Michigan Bell.

 As noted in the majority opinion, at the time of the accident, Ms. Greer was admittedly high on cocaine. Just minutes previously, she had fled the scene of a robbery in a panic attempting to drive herself to safety, even though she had never driven previously and she did not possess a driver’s license.

 This concession occurred in response to specific questioning at oral argument on April 1, 1997, during counsel’s attempt to argue that Michigan Bell had a duty because there had been forty-four previous car accidents in the vicinity of this intersection (i.e., not involving this or any other telephone stand) and twelve accidents elsewhere in the City of Flint involving telephones in general. Counsel unambiguously admitted that there had been no previous accidents involving this telephone stand.

 See Etter v Michigan Bell Telephone Co, 179 Mich App 551, 557; 446 NW2d 500 (1989):
When opposing defendant’s motion for summary disposition, plaintiff presented little or no evidence that the accident in question was foreseeable. There were no prior accidents at this location. The only similar accident involving one of defendant’s outdoor phones occurred ten years earlier and at a different location. Considering that defendant has over 11,000 outdoor public telephones in this state, this type of accident cannot be said to be foreseeable so as to give rise to a duty on defendant’s part. [Emphasis added.]

 See, e.g., Buczkowski v McKay, 441 Mich 96, 100; 490 NW2d 330 (1992) (“the duty to use ‘reasonable care’ is the standard for liability”); Riddle v McLouth Steel Products Corp, 440 Mich 85, 100; 485 NW2d 676 (1992) (a defendant “is not an insurer of the safety of an invitee, and his duty is only to exercise reasonable care for the invitee’s protection”); Samson v Saginaw Professional Building, Inc, 393 Mich 393, 406; 224 NW2d 843 (1975) (“Negligence, however, is not found to exist unless an actor, who is under a duty to act, fails to act after he has perceived or should have perceived an unreasonable risk of harm to another.”) (emphasis in original); Babula v Robertson, 212 Mich App 45, 49; 536 NW2d 834 (1995) (“As a general rule, there is no duty to protect against the criminal acts of a third party absent a special relationship between the defendant and the plaintiff or the defendant and the third person.”); Etter, supra (Michigan Bell had no duty, as a matter of law, to outdoor public telephone patron injured by out-of-control car).

 See, e.g., Babula, supra at 54 (“Proximate cause means such cause as operates to produce particular consequences without the intervention of any independent, unforeseen cause, without which the injuries would not have occurred,” and causation may be decided as a matter of law when “reasonable minds could not differ regarding the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury.”); Rogalski v Tavernier, 208 Mich App 302, 306; 527 NW2d 73 (1995) (declining to impose social host liability on parents who provided alcohol, for injuries caused by intervening criminal acts); Etter, supra (risk of harm to outdoor public telephone patron injured by out-of-control car was not foreseeable, as a matter of law).