Draughon v. Evening Star Holiness Church of Dunn

• Decision Date: 05 June 2020
• Docket Number: No. 216A19,216A19
• Parties: Milton DRAUGHON Sr., Plaintiff v. EVENING STAR HOLINESS CHURCH OF DUNN, Defendant/Third-Party Plaintiff, and Dafford Funeral Home, Inc., Third-Party Defendant
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

374 N.C. 479

843 S.E.2d 72

Milton DRAUGHON Sr., Plaintiff

v.EVENING STAR HOLINESS CHURCH OF DUNN, Defendant/Third-Party Plaintiff,andDafford Funeral Home, Inc., Third-Party Defendant

No. 216A19

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Filed June 5, 2020

Brent Adams & Associates, by Brenton D. Adams and Mark R. McGrath, Research Triangle Park, for plaintiff-appellee.

Yates McLamb & Weyher, Raleigh, by Sean T. Partrick, for defendant/third-party plaintiff-appellant.

No brief filed by third-party defendant-appellee.

NEWBY, Justice.

North Carolina common law establishes a duty of each person to take reasonable care to not harm others and a corresponding duty of each person to take reasonable care to not harm oneself. Recognizing this reasoned balance, this Court has explained that a landowner does not have a duty to warn a visitor about a condition on the landowner's property that is open and obvious. This Court likewise has emphasized that a defendant is not liable for injuries to a plaintiff when the plaintiff does not take reasonable care to protect himself. Our precedent requires courts to apply an objective reasonable person standard. In this case plaintiff used a set of stairs with a top step that was visibly higher than the other steps and made of noticeably different materials. When plaintiff used the set of stairs a second time, he failed to take the precautions a reasonable person would have taken to avoid tripping on the higher step. Because the alleged defect was open and obvious and thus should have been evident to plaintiff, and because plaintiff did not take reasonable care, the trial court correctly granted summary judgment in favor of defendant. The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed.

Plaintiff visited defendant's church property for a funeral, and employees of the funeral home asked him to help carry the casket. After plaintiff agreed, he was led through a section of the church building and then outside, down a small set of stairs. He and three others carried the casket from a hearse into the church building, taking the same set of stairs he had just descended. Plaintiff walked sideways as he carried the casket. He watched the doorway instead of where he was stepping. He tripped near the top of the steps, fell into the church building, and was injured.

The set of stairs was fully visible as plaintiff approached it with the casket. It is pictured here:¹

The set of stairs includes five steps. Each of the bottom four steps is made of gray concrete and rises about six and one-half inches, or slightly more. The fifth and final step is made of both red brick and gray concrete, initially rising about nine and one-half inches, with a white, wooden platform on top, set a few inches back from the edge, that adds just over an inch to that height. The total rise of the top step is thus about four inches greater than that of the other steps, constituting about a sixty-one percent increase in rise.

Plaintiff filed a complaint against defendant to recover for his injuries alleging, among other things, that defendant failed to keep its premises in a reasonably safe condition and failed to warn plaintiff of a dangerous and defective condition on the property. Defendant filed an answer, and the parties conducted discovery, including plaintiff's deposition. Defendant then moved for summary judgment, arguing, among other things, that any dangerous condition on the property was open and obvious and that plaintiff was contributorily negligent. The trial court evaluated the evidence presented and decided that, even viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, there was no issue of material fact and that defendant was entitled to summary judgment. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals reversed. It held that genuine issues of material fact existed regarding whether the condition of the top step was open and obvious, whether the top step caused plaintiff's fall, and whether plaintiff was contributorily negligent. Draughon v. Evening Star Holiness Church of Dunn , ––– N.C.App. ––––, 828 S.E.2d 176, 179–81 (2019). The dissent claimed defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law because plaintiff was contributorily negligent. Id. at 182–83 (Dillon, J., dissenting).

Defendant appealed as of right to this Court based on the dissent, and also filed a petition for discretionary review for this Court to consider additional issues, including whether the condition of the top step was open and obvious. This Court allowed the petition on 25 September 2019.

We reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and uphold the trial court's grant of summary judgment. Courts should hesitate to find negligence as a matter of law. But when, as here, uncontroverted facts viewed from an objective standpoint establish that the plaintiff encountered an open and obvious risk, it is appropriate for courts to find as a matter of law that the defendant had no duty to warn the plaintiff or that the plaintiff's claim is barred by contributory negligence.

In a classic negligence action like the one in this case, a plaintiff must present sufficient evidence of four elements to survive a motion to dismiss: (1) that the defendant owed a duty of care toward the plaintiff, (2) that the defendant breached that duty, (3) that the defendant's breach proximately caused harm to the plaintiff, and (4) that the plaintiff has thereby suffered damages. See, e.g. , Hairston v. Alexander Tank and Equip. Co. , 310 N.C. 227, 232, 311 S.E.2d 559, 564 (1984).

The summary judgment standard requires the trial court to construe evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Nonetheless, our case law has made it clear that when the condition that allegedly caused the injury, viewed objectively, is open and obvious, judgment as a matter of law is appropriate. See, e.g. , Deaton v. Bd. of Trs. of Elon Coll. , 226 N.C. 433, 439–40, 38 S.E.2d 561, 565–66 (1946) (upholding the trial court's dismissal of the plaintiff's action because, whether or not the plaintiff put on evidence of the defendant's negligence, the condition that caused the plaintiff's injury was open and obvious).

In North Carolina, a landowner has a duty to warn visitors of any hidden danger on its property of which the landowner should be aware. See, e.g. , id. at 438, 38 S.E.2d at 564–65 ("The rule applies only to latent dangers which the [visitors] could not reasonably have discovered and of which the [defendant] knew or should have known."). A landowner does not, however, have a duty to warn anyone of a condition that is open and obvious. Garner v. Atl. Greyhound Corp. , 250 N.C. 151, 161, 108 S.E.2d 461, 468 (1959) ("Where a condition of premises is obvious ... generally there is no duty on the part of the owner of the premises to warn of that condition." (alteration in original) (quoting Benton v. United Bank Bldg. Co. , 223 N.C. 809, 813, 28 S.E.2d 491, 493 (1944) )); see also Branks v. Kern , 320 N.C. 621, 624, 359 S.E.2d 780, 782 (1987) (explaining that the duty to warn applies to "hidden dangers known to or discoverable by the defendants" (emphasis added)), abrogated on other grounds by Nelson v. Freeland , 349 N.C. 615, 507 S.E.2d 882 (1998). A condition is open and obvious if it would be detected by "any ordinarily intelligent person using his eyes in an ordinary manner." Coleman v. Colonial Stores, Inc. , 259 N.C. 241, 242, 130 S.E.2d 338, 340 (1963). If the condition is open and obvious, a visitor is legally deemed to have equal or superior knowledge to the owner, and thus a warning is unnecessary. See Branks , 320 N.C. at 624, 359 S.E.2d at 782 ("[T]here is no duty to warn ... of a hazard obvious to any ordinarily intelligent person using his eyes in an ordinary manner, or one of which the plaintiff had equal or superior knowledge.").

North Carolina common law also recognizes the defense of contributory negligence; thus, a plaintiff cannot recover for injuries resulting from a defendant's negligence if the plaintiff's own negligence contributed to his injury. See, e.g. , Smith v. Fiber Controls Corp. , 300 N.C. 669, 677, 268 S.E.2d 504, 509 (1980). This rule is closely related to the principle that a defendant has no duty to warn of an open and obvious condition because a plaintiff is negligent if he fails to reasonably adjust his behavior in light of an obvious risk. See, e.g. , id. at 673, 268 S.E.2d at 507 ("Plaintiff may be contributorily negligent if his conduct ignores unreasonable risks or dangers which would have been apparent to a prudent person exercising ordinary care for his own safety.").

Contributory negligence also implicates proximate cause if a visitor's own lack of ordinary care is a cause of the accident. With contributory negligence, a plaintiff's actual behavior is compared to that of a reasonable person under similar circumstances. See, e.g. , Holland v. Malpass , 266 N.C. 750, 752–53, 147 S.E.2d 234, 236–37 (1966) (explaining that the invitee of a business must use reasonable care to avoid harm).

Applying these principles, this Court has, on multiple occasions, upheld judgment as a matter of law for the defendant in cases with facts similar to the facts of this case. In Coleman , a customer was exiting a grocery store when he tripped on a metal screen jutting out at a right angle from the exit door. 259 N.C. at 242, 130 S.E.2d at 339. The metal screen was in the shape of a right triangle with a base width of about thirty-four inches, a top width of about eight inches, and a height of four and one-half to five feet. Id. This Court held that, even though "[t]here was nothing there to call [the customer's] attention to the metal screen," id. , the condition would have been obvious to the ordinary person and so judgment in favor of the defendant was appropriate, id. at 242–43, 130 S.E.2d at 340.

In Garner , the plaintiff entered the defendant's store at an area where the sidewalk and the floor of the store entryway sat at nearly the same...