Klaue v. Galencare, Inc., 96-02532

• Citation: 696 So.2d 933
• Decision Date: 09 July 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-02532,96-02532
• Parties: 22 Fla. L. Weekly D1714 Lisa KLAUE and Randy Klaue, Appellants, v. GALENCARE, INC., d/b/a Brandon Hospital, Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Florida (US)

Page 933

696 So.2d 933

22 Fla. L. Weekly D1714

Lisa KLAUE and Randy Klaue, Appellants, v. GALENCARE, INC., d/b/a Brandon Hospital, Appellee.

No. 96-02532.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

Second District.

July 9, 1997.

Timothy G. Anderson and Leslie Longshore of Timothy G. Anderson, P.A., Tampa, for Appellants.

Kelly K. Griffin and Andrea Hairelson of Gunn, Ogden & Sullivan, P.A., Tampa, for Appellee.

LAZZARA, Judge.

The appellants, Lisa Klaue and Randy Klaue, seek review of the summary final judgment rendered in favor of the appellee, Galencare, Inc., d/b/a Brandon Hospital, in a negligence action. Because we conclude that the appellee as the moving party has failed to sustain its onerous burden of demonstrating conclusively that the appellants cannot prevail on their negligence claims as a matter of law, we reverse and remand for further proceedings. See, e.g., Wills v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 351 So.2d 29 (Fla.1977).

The appellants sued the appellee in a two-count complaint. In count one they alleged that Mrs. Klaue was lawfully on the appellee's hospital business premises as an invitee in connection with her employment with another company which required her to copy the appellee's records. The appellants claimed that the appellee negligently allowed a dangerous condition to exist on its premises and described this condition as "file folders, which were made available for [Mrs. Klaue] to photocopy and that were negligently stacked and arranged on a hard shelf." They further alleged that as a result of the appellee's negligence, files fell from the shelf striking Mrs. Klaue and causing her to sustain various personal injuries which were permanent or continuing in nature. Finally, in count two, the appellants claimed that as a consequence of the appellee's negligence, Mr. Klaue suffered a loss of consortium.

The appellee filed a motion for summary judgment based solely on the deposition testimony of Mrs. Klaue. It asserted that there was no evidence that it failed to use ordinary care to keep its premises in a reasonably safe condition, nor was there any evidence that the dangerous condition alleged was in fact unreasonably hazardous or dangerous. The appellee also claimed that there was no evidence establishing that the condition alleged occurred with such regularity that its recurrence was foreseeable.

Mrs. Klaue's deposition testimony established the following unrefuted material facts. Mrs. Klaue had been employed for approximately four months by an independent company which provided copying services to the appellee at its business premises. It was her responsibility to retrieve medical files from shelves in the appellee's medical records department and to provide them to another employee of her company for duplication. The appellee had an established policy, however, that only its own employees could reshelve and organize the files. On the day of the incident which precipitated this lawsuit, Mrs. Klaue was in the process of retrieving a file located on a shelf above her eye level. When she pulled the file down another file, which unbeknownst to her had been "shoved" backwards inside the file she was retrieving, fell out and struck her on the forehead. According to Mrs. Klaue, this event surprised and startled her causing her to lose her balance, fall against a wall, and then to the floor. As a consequence of her fall, Mrs. Klaue claimed that she injured her lower back and left hip.

Mrs. Klaue also testified that prior to this incident she had never experienced any problem pulling a file from the shelves. Her testimony revealed, however, that the file that struck her was not placed on the shelf in the usual manner she had previously come to expect when retrieving files she needed. As Mrs. Klaue explained in response to a question from the appellee's attorney designed to elicit from her the nature of the negligently maintained condition in the appellee's records department: "[t]hat the--that it was usually just a single row of charts facing towards--towards you, but for some reason there were charts turned backwards on the backside that shouldn't have been there, and they had shoved them into the files that were in the front so that when I grabbed what I wanted or needed, the--the rest of them came down." (Emphasis added.)

In its order granting summary judgment, the trial court found "as a matter of law that a file folder shoved into another file folder that falls when that file is being removed does not constitute a dangerous condition so as to impose liability on [the appellee]." We conclude that this legal determination was error. Unquestionably, under the facts presented, the appellee owed Mrs. Klaue a duty to maintain its medical records department where she worked in a reasonably safe condition. See, e.g., Ahl v. Stone Southwest, Inc., 666 So.2d 922 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995) (explaining the duties a landowner owes an invitee). ¹ In line with this duty, it had the responsibility of insuring that its employees use reasonable care in reshelving medical files. See Hudge v. Xtra Super Food Ctrs., Inc., 677 So.2d 405 (Fla. 3d DCA 1996) (store owed deliveryman duty to use reasonable care in stacking boards in area where he was delivering merchandise). Under Florida law, the issue of whether the appellee breached this duty was improperly resolved by the trial court because the question of whether a business entity was negligent in stacking items on a shelf at a particular height, in a particular manner, and at a particular location thus causing a dangerous condition to exist is a jury question. See Valdes v. Faby Enters., Inc., 483 So.2d 65 (Fla. 3d DCA), review dismissed, 491 So.2d 278 (Fla.1986); Frison v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., 407 So.2d 389 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981). Moreover, given the unrefuted testimony of Mrs. Klaue, genuine issues of material fact remain unresolved regarding whether the appellee's employees, whom the record demonstrates bore the sole responsibility for reshelving and arranging files which had been copied, used reasonable care in reshelving the "falling file" that set in motion the chain of events which were alleged to have been the proximate cause of Mrs. Klaue's injuries and Mr. Klaue's loss of consortium. See Hudge, 677 So.2d 405; cf. Navison v. Winn and Lovett Tampa, Inc., 92 So.2d 531 (Fla.1957).

We also conclude that to the extent the trial court's ruling determined as a matter of law that the appellee's alleged conduct did not proximately cause Mrs. Klaue's injuries and Mr. Klaue's loss of consortium because of the absence of evidence establishing the element of foreseeability, such a determination in light of this record was likewise erroneous. In McCain v. Florida Power Corp., 593 So.2d 500 (Fla.1992), which the appellee cited to us, the supreme court addressed the legal concept of foreseeability as an essential component of proximate cause. It explained that "harm is 'proximate' in a legal sense if prudent human foresight would lead one to expect that similar harm is likely to be substantially caused by the specific act or omission in question. In other words, human experience teaches that the same harm can be expected to recur if the same act or omission is repeated in a similar context." Id. at 503(footnote omitted). Within this context, the court noted, "it is immaterial that the defendant could not foresee the precise manner in which the injury occurred or its exact extent" and "[i]n such instances, the true extent of the liability would remain questions for the jury to decide." Id. (emphasis in original).

The court further explained, on the other hand, that "an injury caused by a freakish and improbable chain of events would not be 'proximate' precisely because it is unquestionably unforeseeable," and determined, therefore, that "[t]he law does not impose liability for freak injuries that were utterly unpredictable in light of human experience." Id. It thus noted the trial court's discretion to remove the issue of proximate causation from the jury if "after the event and looking back from the harm to the actor's negligent conduct, it appears to the...