McKinley v. Circle K

435 S.W.3d 77, 2014 WL 2784418, 2014 Ky. App. LEXIS 106
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedJune 20, 2014
DocketNo. 2013-CA-000289-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 435 S.W.3d 77 (McKinley v. Circle K) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McKinley v. Circle K, 435 S.W.3d 77, 2014 WL 2784418, 2014 Ky. App. LEXIS 106 (Ky. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

OPINION

VANMETER, Judge:

Donald McKinley appeals from the Jefferson Circuit Court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of Circle K. For the following reasons, we reverse and remand.

On December 17, 2010, McKinley entered Circle K to purchase a lottery ticket. He parked in the rear of the store in a lot not marked for parking, but where he says he and others have parked regularly for years. The day before, December 16, a snowstorm hit in Louisville. On the day of the snowstorm, Circle K hired an independent contractor to clear the snow and ice from the store’s front and side lots, but not from the back lot, and to treat the cleared areas with salt. Snow and ice remained on the back lot on December 17, of which McKinley was aware.

Wdiile returning to his truck after purchasing his lottery ticket, McKinley traversed the same path he took to enter the store and slipped and fell on a patch of ice, breaking three ribs. McKinley then [79]*79brought this premises liability action against Circle K. After discovery, Circle K filed a motion for summary judgment which the trial court granted. This appeal follows.

McKinley contends that the trial court erred in granting Circle K’s motion for summary judgment by finding that Circle K did not owe McKinley a duty because the snow and ice were open and obvious conditions on the lot and because McKinley’s injury was not foreseeable so as to extend Circle K’s duty to protect him. McKinley argues that because of Circle K’s status as a business, Circle K had a duty to protect invitees such as him from unreasonable risks and to maintain its premises in a reasonably safe condition. McKinley also argues that the question of foreseeability is a factual determination to be made by a jury and should therefore overcome a motion for summary judgment. We agree summary judgment was not appropriate in this case, but for slightly different reasons than those advanced by McKinley.

CR1 56.03 provides that summary judgment is appropriate when no genuine issue of material fact exists and the moving party is therefore entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Summary judgment may be granted when “as a matter of law, it appears that it would be impossible for the respondent to produce evidence at the trial warranting a judgment in his favor and against the movant.” Steelvest, Inc. v. Scansteel Serv. Ctr., Inc., 807 S.W.2d 476, 483 (Ky.1991) (internal quotations omitted). Whether summary judgment is appropriate is a legal question involving no factual findings, so the trial court’s grant of summary judgment is reviewed de novo. Coomer v. CSX Transp., Inc., 319 S.W.3d 366, 370-71 (Ky.2010).

With respect to dangerous conditions that are open and obvious to an invitee, as in this case, the inquiry used to determine a land possessor’s liability has been recently altered. Since the parties filed their appellate briefs, the Kentucky Supreme Court has rendered its decision in Shelton v. Ky. Easter Seals Soc’y, Inc., 413 S.W.3d 901 (Ky.2013), and we find Shelton, as it clarifies Ky. River Med. Ctr. v. McIntosh, 319 S.W.3d 385 (Ky.2010), a case discussed by the parties in their briefs, to be controlling.

McKinley contends that Circle K owed a duty to warn and protect him from the snow and ice conditions. Under McIntosh and previous open-and-obvious cases, “a defendant’s liability would be excused because the court would determine the defendant did not owe a duty to the plaintiff because of the obviousness condition.” Shelton, 413 S.W.3d at 910. In other words, a defendant would be absolved from liability due to a plaintiffs failure to take notice of and avoid an open and obvious danger. Id. However, the court in Shelton found this duty analysis to be flawed since it overlooks the applicable standard of care, and decided to “shift the focus away from duty to the question of whether the defendant has fulfilled the relevant standard of care.” Id.

Under Shelton, the duty analysis is simply to determine the specific duty owed by the land possessor, besides the general duty of reasonable care. Id. at 908. In determining the specific duty owed,

duty is associated with the status of the injured party as an invitee, licensee, or trespasser.... [A]n invitee is generally defined as one who “enters upon the premises at the express or implied invitation of the owner or occupant on be[80]*80half of mutual interest to them both, or in connection with the business of the owner or occupant.” Generally speaking, a possessor of land owes a duty to an invitee to discover unreasonably dangerous conditions on the land and either eliminate or warn of them.

Id. at 909. Because McKinley was at Circle K to purchase a lottery ticket, he was there as an invitee and, as a result, Circle K owed him not only a general duty of reasonable care, but also the more specific duty associated with the land possessor-invitee relationship. Id. at 910. That being said, “[t]his is as far as the duty analysis needs to go.” Id.

The next question is whether the land possessor fulfilled the relevant standard of care owed to its invitee, which the Shelton court found to be a question of breach, not duty. The standard of care for invitors, as expressed in the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 343 (1965), is as follows:

According to the Restatement, a possessor of land is “subject to liability” when he fails to protect his invitees from harm, despite the condition’s open and obvious nature, because he should have anticipated that harm would result. But a possessor of land is simply “not liable to his invitees for physical harm caused to them by any condition on the premises whose danger is known or obvious to them unless the possessor should anticipate the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness.” Read together, as called for by the Restatement (Second), Section 343 outlines the general standard of care applicable to invitors; and Section 343A serves as an acknowledgement that under certain limited circumstances, negligence will not be present. In other words, Section 343A suspends liability when the danger is known or obvious to the invitee, unless the invitor should anticipate or foresee harm resulting from the condition despite its obviousness or despite the invitee’s knowledge of the condition. The Restatement does not support a no-duty determination.
Accordingly, an open-and-obvious condition does not eliminate a landowner’s duty. Rather, in the event that the defendant is shielded from liability, it is because the defendant fulfilled its duty of care and nothing further is required. The obviousness of the condition is a “circumstance” to be factored under the standard of care. No liability is imposed when the defendant is deemed to have acted reasonably under the given circumstances. So a more precise statement of the law would be that a landowner’s duty to exercise reasonable care or warn of or eliminate unreasonable dangers is not breached.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
435 S.W.3d 77, 2014 WL 2784418, 2014 Ky. App. LEXIS 106, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mckinley-v-circle-k-kyctapp-2014.