Davis ex rel. Estates of Courtney Davis v. Brickman Landscaping, Ltd.

• Decision Date: 15 September 2014
• Citation: 98 A.3d 1173,219 N.J. 395
• Parties: Wayne DAVIS and Irene Laverne Davis, individually and on behalf of the Estates of Courtney Davis and Myles Davis, deceased, Plaintiffs–Respondents, v. BRICKMAN LANDSCAPING, LTD., d/b/a Brickman Landscaping, Generated Materials, LLC, Northern Fire and Safety, Township of Franklin, County of Somerset, John Goodman, Denise Goodman, Janet Demary, Ann Kingston, Connie Gordon, Kay Styles–Timmons, Wendy LaFortune, and Tyshee Styles, Defendants, and Atlantic Fire Service, Cintas Corporation and Master Protection LP, d/b/a FireMaster LP, Defendants–Appellants.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

219 N.J. 395

98 A.3d 1173

Wayne DAVIS and Irene Laverne Davis, individually and on behalf of the Estates of Courtney Davis and Myles Davis, deceased, Plaintiffs–Respondents,

v. BRICKMAN LANDSCAPING, LTD., d/b/a Brickman Landscaping, Generated Materials, LLC, Northern Fire and Safety, Township of Franklin, County of Somerset, John Goodman, Denise Goodman, Janet Demary, Ann Kingston, Connie Gordon, Kay Styles–Timmons, Wendy LaFortune, and Tyshee Styles, Defendants,andAtlantic Fire Service, Cintas Corporation and Master Protection LP, d/b/a FireMaster LP, Defendants–Appellants.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued March 4, 2014.

Decided Sept. 15, 2014.

Michael B. Devins argued the cause for appellant Cintas Corporation (McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, attorneys; Mr. Devins, Walter R. Krzastek, and Joseph G. Fuoco, Morristown, on the briefs).

Michael L. Trucillo argued the cause for appellant Atlantic Fire Service (Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, attorneys; Martin J. Sullivan, of counsel; Mr. Trucillo and Mr. Sullivan, Newark, on the briefs).

Charles C. Eblen argued the cause for appellant Master Protection LP d/b/a FireMaster LP (Shook, Hardy & Bacon, attorneys; Mr. Eblen and Karen A. Read, a member of the Missouri bar, on the briefs).

G. Martin Meyers argued the cause for respondents (Law Offices of G. Martin Meyers, Denville, attorney; Mr. Meyers and Susan S. Singer, of counsel and on the briefs).

Justice FERNANDEZ–VINA delivered the opinion of the Court.

This appeal presents two questions related to the standard of care that private fire sprinkler maintenance inspectors are required to exercise. First, we are asked to consider whether plaintiffs must offer expert testimony to establish the standard of care applicable to fire sprinkler inspectors who performed their inspections pursuant to relevant provisions of the New Jersey Uniform Fire Code (UFC), N.J.A.C. 5:70–1.1 to –4.20. If such expert testimony is required, we are then called upon to address whether plaintiffs' expert adequately supported his asserted standard of care, and a breach thereof, or whether he offered an inadmissible net opinion.

The defendants in this case are private fire sprinkler inspection companies that were hired to assess the operating condition of a hotel's sprinkler system. Following a fatal fire at the hotel, the parents of the victims, individually and on behalf of the estates of the decedents, alleged that defendants had negligently failed to inform the hotel owner about a flaw in the design of the hotel's sprinkler system.

At the trial level, the court granted defendants' motions for summary judgment. The court explained that defendants' inspectors had possessed no duty to report any sprinkler system design flaws to the hotel owner because applicable State regulations did not necessitate any such reporting. The Appellate Division reversed, agreeing with plaintiffs' contention that defendants' compliance with regulatory requirements was not dispositive of the issue of negligence. The appellate panel explained that defendants owed plaintiffs a duty of reasonable care and that a jury should decide whether defendants had been obliged to exceed the dictates of the regulations in their exercise of reasonable care.

After considering the complex nature of the Uniform Fire Code and other factors relevant to sprinkler inspections, we concludethat a jury should not be allowed to speculate as to the proper standard of care in this case. Instead, we hold that plaintiffs were required to establish the applicable standard of care through expert testimony. Although plaintiffs presented an expert during pretrial proceedings, the standard of care he set forth represented only his personal view and was not founded upon any objective support. His opinion as to the applicable standard of care thus constituted an inadmissible net opinion. As a result of plaintiffs' failure to support their asserted standard of care with admissible expert testimony, they were unable to establish the required elements of their negligence cause of action. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and reinstate the trial court's grant of summary judgment to defendants.

I.

A.

Defendants Atlantic Fire Service (Atlantic), Cintas Corporation (Cintas), and Master Protection L.P., d/b/a FireMaster L.P. (FireMaster) were each hired to perform sprinkler inspections at the Staybridge Suites Hotel in Somerset in the years preceding the fire. FireMaster completed the inspections between 1992 and 1997. Atlantic inspected the sprinklers between 1997 and 2004. After Cintas purchased Atlantic, Cintas completed the inspections between November 2004 and May 2005.

A fire occurred at the Staybridge Suites Hotel on May 13, 2005. On that date, Irene Davis was temporarily residing in a second-floor suite with her two children. The primary means of egress from that suite was an external, combustible staircase that led from the second-floor suites to the hotel's parking lot. Beneath that staircase, the hotel had constructed a storage closet but had not installed a sprinkler in the closet.¹

The May 2005 fire was sparked by a lit cigarette butt, which someone threw into the landscaping mulch beside the hotel. The fire spread to the storage closet and then up the stairs to the second floor. Davis and her children became trapped in their suite. Tragically, the two children did not survive the fire. Davis was rescued by emergency personnel after suffering serious injuries from smoke inhalation.

B.

Following the fatal fire, plaintiffs Irene Davis and her husband, Wayne Davis, filed suit individually and on behalf of the estates of their deceased children against various defendants. In addition to their claims against the hotel and the hotel's landscaping contractor, among others, plaintiffs brought negligence claims against Atlantic, Cintas, and FireMaster.² Plaintiffs alleged that defendants' inspectors had negligently failed to inform the hotel owner of the need to install a sprinkler in the storage closet beneath the staircase. Plaintiffs asserted that, had such a sprinkler been installed, Davis and her children would have been able to escape the fire.

Both plaintiffs and defendants obtained expert reports that addressed the proper standard of care by which the performance of defendants' inspectors should be measured.

Defendants' expert, Russell Fleming, asserted that applicable provisions of the Uniform Fire Code delineated the extent of the care that defendants' inspectors were required to exercise. Specifically, Fleming pointed to one standard developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and adopted by reference into the Uniform Fire Code—NFPA 25—as representing the full extent of the responsibilities of private sprinkler maintenance inspectors. Fleming concluded that defendants' inspectors had properly complied with all requirements of NFPA 25 and that NFPA 25 obligated them neither to evaluate the need for an additional sprinkler nor to notify the hotel owner about any such need.

Plaintiffs' expert, Jack Mawhinney,³ agreed that NFPA 25 did not require defendants' inspectors to identify or report defects in the design of a sprinkler system, such as the need for an additional sprinkler. However, he further asserted that “NFPA 25 ... [i]s just written wrong,” and that reasonable care obligates sprinkler inspectors to take additional precautions beyond those set forth in NFPA 25. He admitted that he was “not familiar with the law in New Jersey,” but nonetheless believed that “[t]here is an expectation of [a] standard of reasonable care which applies throughout the country that ... thought and experience and knowledge has to be applied in following the requirement of the regulations.” He thus concluded that defendants' inspectors failed to exercise reasonable care when they neglected to notify the hotel owner that a sprinkler was needed in the storage closet beneath the staircase at issue.

Following discovery, defendants moved for summary judgment. They argued that they could not be found negligent because NFPA 25 constituted the applicable standard of care and that plaintiffs could not point to any evidence that defendants' inspectors had failed to satisfy the requirements of that standard. They also asserted that Mawhinney's view—that a higher standard of reasonable care must be satisfied—constituted an impermissible net opinion.

The trial court agreed with defendants that there existed no genuine issue of material fact as to whether they had negligently inspected the Staybridge Suites Hotel. The court did not strike Mawhinney's opinion but nonetheless held that defendants had not been required to satisfy any standard of care beyond that contained in NFPA 25. Therefore, because plaintiffs had failed to establish that defendants had breached the duty of care set forth by NFPA 25, the trial court granted summary judgment to Atlantic, Cintas, and FireMaster.

On appeal, the Appellate Division reversed the trial court's grant of summary judgment to all three defendants.⁴ The panel explained that compliance with safety regulations, such as NFPA 25, was not dispositive on the issue of negligence. Instead, reasonable care constituted the relevantstandard, and whether defendants exercised adequate care remained a question of material fact for the jury to decide.

Each of the three defendants petitioned this Court for certification, and we granted their petitions. 212 N.J. 459, 56 A.3d 394 (2012).

II.

Defendants urge this Court to reverse the Appellate Division and reinstate the trial court's grant of their motions for summary judgment. They contend that plaintiffs bear the burden of establishing defendants' breach of the appropriate standard of care and that plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that the proper standard exceeds the requirements of NFPA 25. Although plaintiffs' expert, Mawhinney, asserted that reasonable care required defendants...