Manley v. Hallbauer

387 P.3d 185, 53 Kan. App. 2d 297, 2016 Kan. App. LEXIS 73
Court of Appeals of Kansas·Decided December 23, 2016·No. No. 115,531·Published·Cited by 5 cases

Opinion

Leben, J.;

One afternoon in September 2011, in a rural part of Labette County, Darren Manley was driving north on one gravel road while John Patton was driving west on another, and their trucks collided at the unsigned intersection of those two roads. Manley was killed. His family, through his estate, sued the County, Patton, and the Hallbauers, who own the property at the southeast comer of the intersection.

The Manleys settled with both the County and Patton. Everyone agrees that at the time of the accident, trees and vegetation growing on the Hallbauers’ property obstructed the view of drivers traveling where Manley and Patton had been. The district court granted [298] the Hallbauers' motion for summary judgment, finding that under Kansas caselaw, landowners don’t owe a duty to drivers to maintain visibility at intersections by trimming the trees on their property. We must determine whether its legal ruling—that the owner of a rural property doesn’t have a duty to cut down or trim trees on the property so that drivers have good visibility at an adjacent intersection—was correct.

Factual and Procedural Background

The facts aren’t substantially contested. On the afternoon of September 14, 2011, at the intersection of Anderson Road and 20000 Road in Labette County, Darren Manley was killed when his truck collided with John Patton’s truck. Manley was headed north on Anderson Road, which runs north and south. Patton was headed west on 20000 Road, which runs east and west. Both are gravel roads.

The intersection did not have any traffic signs. A professional engineer testified that he thought the roads carried fewer than 400 cars a day, making them both “low volume” roads. Labette County’s director of public works likewise testified that her office had studied tire average daily traffic of these two roads in January 2015 and found they were both “low volume” roads. The engineer also noted that it wasn’t uncommon for rural intersections in Labette and surrounding counties to have restricted visibility due to crops or trees. According to the officers who investigated the accident, there was no evidence that either driver had tried to brake or evade the collision.

The Hallbauers own and live on about 11 acres of land at the southeast comer of the Anderson/20000 intersection. At the time of the accident, a row of trees stretched along their property line from the intersection to the south, and another row followed their property line from the intersection to the east. According to the officers who investigated the accident, there were also more trees in the interior of the property, “making it impossible for westbound traffic to see approaching northbound traffic” and vice versa. The Manleys’ engineering expert said he believed that the accident was caused by the lack of traffic signs and the obstmcted visibility created by the Hallbauers’ trees.

[299] The trees had been on the Hallbauers’ property when they bought the land in 2006 and hadn’t changed much since then. The Hallbauers knew that the trees obstructed the view at the intersection, and they had been slowly cutting them down over time. Steven Hallbauer said that from the intersection heading south, the view was completely obstructed for 50 or 60 feet. But until this accident, the Hallbauers hadn’t received any complaints from the County or anyone else about the trees on their property. And according to Labette County’s director of public works, this crash was the first two-vehicle accident at this intersection.

After the accident, Manley’s estate, through his wife, son, and daughter, brought a wrongful-death lawsuit against Labette County, Patton (the driver of the other car), and the Hallbauers. The Manleys settled their claims against Patton and the County.

The Hallbauers filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that they didn’t owe a duty to drivers to trim the trees on their property to maintain visibility at the intersection and thei'efore weren’t liable for Manley’s death in the car accident. The district court agreed; it granted the Hallbauers’ motion and certified its judgment as final under K.S.A. 2015 Supp. 60-254(b).

The Manleys have appealed to our court.

Analysis

The Manleys argue that the Hallbauers owed a duty to Manley to trim their trees to maintain visibility at the intersection and that the district court was wrong to conclude otherwise. Everyone agrees that, factually, the Hallbauers’ trees blocked visibility at the intersection. The question here is whether the law required the Hallbauers to do anything to remedy that situation. In other words, did the Hallbauers owe a duty to Manley?

The existence of a duty is a question of law. Elstun v. Spangles, Inc., 289 Kan. 754, 757, 217 P.3d 450 (2009). Because it’s a question of law and not a contested factual issue, it was appropriate for the district court to grant summary judgment on this question and rule on it without a full trial. See Drouhard-Nordhus v. Rosenquist, 301 Kan. 618, 622, 345 P.3d 281 (2015) (summary judgment appropriate when there’s no genuine issue of material fact); Martin [300] v. Naik, 297 Kan. 241, 245, 300 P.3d 625 (2013) (summary judgment in negligence cases appropriate only for questions of law). We owe no deference to the district court’s conclusion on a question of law and must independently review whether the Hallbau-ers owed a duty to Manley to cut down the trees on their land to improve or maintain visibility at the intersection of Anderson and 20000 Roads. See 297 Kan. at 245.

The underlying legal claim is for negligence. A negligence claim requires (1) the existence of a duty, (2) the breach of that duty, (3) an injury, and (4) sufficient causal connection between the duty breached and the injury sustained (a concept lawyers call “proximate causation”). Smith v. Kansas Gas Service Co., 285 Kan. 33, 39, 169 P.3d 1052 (2007). Where a duty exists, a person generally has the duty to act as a reasonably prudent person would act in similar circumstances. See Fieser v. Kansas Bd. of Healing Arts, 281 Kan. 268, 272, 130 P.3d 555 (2006); Wozniak v. Lipoff, 242 Kan. 583, 607, 750 P.2d 971 (1988).

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Manley v. Hallbauer, 387 P.3d 185, 53 Kan. App. 2d 297, 2016 Kan. App. LEXIS 73 (kanctapp 2016).

387 P.3d 185 (Manley v. Hallbauer) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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