|
E-Bulletin -
2007
|
The Appellate Division, in Brierley, etc. v. Rode, et al., ____ A.2d. ____ (App.Div. 2007) recently refused to hold a parking lot owner liable for the death of a patron of a neighboring business.
In Brierley, the plaintiff’s estate brought a wrongful death suit against a tavern and a car wash; two businesses situated on opposite sides of a public highway. The decedent was struck by a motor vehicle and killed as he crossed the street from the tavern to retrieve his car from the car wash parking lot. The car wash and the tavern had previously agreed that cars belonging to the tavern’s customers could be parked in the car wash parking lot. Originally, the understanding between the two businesses was that the parking of vehicles would be performed by the tavern’s valet, but the car wash later became aware before the accident that the tavern’s patrons were self-parking in the car wash lot with the tavern’s approval. The plaintiff sought to impose liability against the car wash.
The plaintiff argued that when a business permits the customers of another business to use its parking lot, and the businesses are on the opposite sides of a public road, the parking lot owner has a duty to the other business customers to make passage over the road reasonably safe. The duty the plaintiff asserted was an expansion of the principles established in Warrington v. Bird, 204 N.J. Super. 611 (App. Div. 1985) and Mulraney v. Auletto’s Catering, 293 N.J. Super. 1026 (App. Div. 1996).
In Warrington, a restaurant owned a parking lot on the opposite side of a public road. The plaintiff was killed after having dinner at the restaurant while attempting to cross the public road to the lot where he parked his vehicle after having dinner at the restaurant. The court, in holding the restaurant liable, reasoned that when a business provides a parking lot across the road from its establishment, the duty of the proprietor to exercise reasonable care for the safety of its patrons requires that the patrons not be subjected to an unreasonable risk of harm when traversing an expected route between the two locations. The court imposed such a duty upon the restaurant because it was in the best position to employ safety measures on a route the restaurant knew its patrons would use.
Similarly, in Mulraney, the plaintiff was struck by a car while walking across the road from a catering facility, where she was invited as a guest, to a parking lot that the caterer knew was being used by its customers. Unlike Warrington, however, the parking lot was neither owned nor controlled by the caterer. Nonetheless, the court imposed a duty upon the caterer to provide safe passage. In finding such a duty, the court again focused on the ability of the caterer to make the area safe to cross.
Precedent established by the aforementioned cases declared that when a business provides parking spaces across the street from the business for use by its customers, it must use reasonable care in protecting them while they cross the street, regardless of whether it owns or controls the parking lot. The plaintiff in Brierley sought to expand this principle to include not only the business the patrons were visiting, but also the owner of the parking lot.
The Appellate Division rejected the argument. The court in Brierley again focused on who was in the best position to provide safe passage. The court determined the critical relationship giving rise to the duty was the existing relationship between the tavern and its customers. The tavern chose the parking method and it was in the best position to assess the hazards it had created for its customers and to select the measure or combination of measures that would best alleviate those hazards. The car wash, on the other hand, was closed when the tavern’s customers used its parking lot and was therefore far less able to assess or ameliorate the specific hazards created by the tavern’s business operation. Therefore, because the tavern was in the best position to provide safe passage, the court refused to expand the duty established in Warrington and Mulraney, and hold the car wash liable.
Of course, the Brierley decision did not wholly nullify all duties with regard to the car wash and its parking lot. Rather, the car wash retained the duty to maintain its lot in reasonably safe condition and to provide a reasonably safe means of exit and entry. The car wash was just not responsible for the safety of tavern patrons while they crossed the public street.
While the Brierley decision appears far-reaching, one must read it with caution. In fact, businesses that engage in practices similar to those found in Brierley should take the decision as a warning; either provide patrons of a neighboring establishment whom you permissibly allow to use your parking lot with reasonably safe passage, or be faced with the very real possibility of being held liable for injuries a patron sustains while attempting to reach your facility. The Brierley decision is indicative of the highly fact-specific nature of negligence. Accordingly, whether a court will impose a duty in any given situation will turn upon the circumstances present in that particular case. The Brierley decision turned on the unique facts of the case; facts that may not be present in a similar situation. Consequently, one should proceed with caution when allowing the use of a parking lot by a neighboring business located across a public street.
|
