Garcia v. Colo. Cab Co.

• Decision Date: 15 June 2020
• Docket Number: Supreme Court Case No. 19SC116
• Citation: 467 P.3d 302
• Parties: Jose GARCIA, Petitioner, v. COLORADO CAB COMPANY LLC, a Colorado limited liability company d/b/a Denver Yellow Cab, Respondent.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

467 P.3d 302

Jose GARCIA, Petitioner,

v.COLORADO CAB COMPANY LLC, a Colorado limited liability company d/b/a Denver Yellow Cab, Respondent.

Supreme Court Case No. 19SC116

Supreme Court of Colorado.

June 15, 2020

Petition for Rehearing Denied July 27, 2020

Attorneys for Petitioner: Foster, Graham, Milstein & Calisher, LLP, Chip G. Schoneberger, Daniel S. Foster, Laura M. Martinez, Denver, Colorado

Attorneys for Respondent: White and Steele, PC, John Lebsack, Keith R. Olivera, E. Catlynne Shadakofsky, Denver, Colorado

En Banc

JUSTICE BOATRIGHT delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶1 As the famed jurist Benjamin N. Cardozo put it, "[d]anger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief." Wagner v. Int'l Ry. Co. , 232 N.Y. 176, 133 N.E. 437, 437 (1921). Following this logic, courts adopted the rescue doctrine, which ensures that negligent actors who put others at risk may be held liable when their negligence injures a third-party rescuer. The rescue doctrine, in other words, is one way the law acknowledges the human instinct to help those in need, even at the risk of one's own safety. This case requires us to determine whether an individual must exert some bodily movement of a specific degree or nature to qualify as a rescuer under the rescue doctrine.¹

¶2 We conclude that a stringent physicality requirement unduly narrows the rescue doctrine. We hold instead that for a person to qualify as a rescuer under the rescue doctrine, he must satisfy a three-pronged test: The plaintiff must have (1) intended to aid or rescue a person whom he, (2) reasonably believed was in imminent peril, and (3) acted in such a way that could have reasonably succeeded or did succeed in preventing or alleviating such peril. We conclude that, on the facts of this case, plaintiff-petitioner Jose Garcia satisfied this test at trial.

I. Facts and Procedural History

¶3 A driver for Colorado Cab Company LLC ("Colorado Cab") picked up an intoxicated Curt Glinton and one of Glinton's friends. After stopping at their destination, the driver told Glinton the total fare. Glinton became upset, started yelling at the driver, and eventually grabbed and punched the driver from behind.

¶4 Meanwhile, Garcia had called a cab from a house nearby. When he saw the cab occupied by Glinton drive by, he thought that it might be the cab he had called, and he began to follow it. When he was roughly a block away from the cab, he heard the driver screaming for help. Garcia ran to the cab and, through the cab's open driver's-side door, told Glinton to stop. Glinton shifted his aggression to Garcia, telling him to "mind his own business." This gave the driver the chance to exit the vehicle. Glinton also exited the vehicle, escalated his aggression toward Garcia, and began to throw punches at Garcia. Garcia was then hit over the head in the melee, causing him to fall to the ground.

¶5 Glinton then entered the driver's seat of the still-running cab and started driving. He hit the still-down Garcia once with the cab, then backed up and again ran Garcia over. As a result, Garcia suffered several severe injuries.²

¶6 Garcia filed a negligence action against Colorado Cab, arguing that Colorado Cab had knowledge of forty-four passenger attacks on its drivers in the previous three years but had failed to install partitions or security cameras in its cabs. In asserting his claim, Garcia relied on the rescue doctrine. He argued that he was injured while rescuing the driver, who was owed a duty by Colorado Cab, meaning it also owed a duty to him. Colorado Cab countered that it owed no duty to Garcia to prevent intentional criminal acts, and that even if it was negligent, Garcia was comparatively negligent because he "[made] a decision to get involved in the situation" and is "at least partially responsible for becoming involved in this incident." The case went to a jury trial.

¶7 At trial, the trial court instructed the jury that "[t]he criminal act of a third party that causes injury, including to a rescuer, does not relieve the defendant of liability if the criminal act of the third party is reasonably foreseeable." The jury instructions also explained comparative negligence and required the jury to determine whether Garcia acted reasonably under the circumstances to protect himself or others from injury.

¶8 The jury found for Garcia and awarded him $1.6 million in total damages. It allocated 45% of the fault to Colorado Cab (for a sum of roughly $720,000), 55% to Glinton, and 0% to Garcia.

¶9 Colorado Cab moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, arguing that it did not owe a duty to Garcia. The trial court denied the motion, finding that, as relevant here, Colorado Cab's arguments failed "to adequately address [Garcia's] status as a rescuer." The court elaborated that Colorado Cab undoubtedly owed a duty to the driver, which created a "derivative duty owed to the rescuer," i.e., Garcia, because it was foreseeable that a rescuer could appear if Colorado Cab breached its duty to the driver.

¶10 Colorado Cab appealed, and a division of the court of appeals reversed. Garcia v. Colo. Cab Co. , 2019 COA 3, ¶ 1, ––– P.3d ––––. As relevant here, the division concluded that Colorado Cab did not owe a duty to Garcia as a rescuer because, "to be deemed a rescuer, the plaintiff must have taken some concrete physical action—that is, some bodily movement and effort—to save the other person from imminent peril." Id. at ¶ 17. According to the division, Garcia did not meet this standard because he "merely approached the cab and told [the driver] and Glinton to stop fighting." Id. at ¶ 19. Had Garcia "[gotten] between the two men or tr[ied] to pull one away from the other," the division reasoned, then Garcia would likely have exerted the necessary level of concrete physical action. Id. Because the division concluded that Garcia was not a rescuer, it did not decide the remaining issues argued on appeal. Id. at ¶ 20 n.9.

¶11 Garcia petitioned this court for review, and we granted certiorari.

II. Analysis

¶12 We first determine the applicable standard of review. Next, we examine relevant rescue doctrine case law from Colorado and other jurisdictions in conjunction with the purpose of the rescue doctrine, and we conclude that the rescue doctrine does not require that a person exert physical action to qualify as a rescuer. In so doing, we conclude that there are three important elements for determining whether a plaintiff qualifies as a rescuer for the purpose of the rescue doctrine: the plaintiff's purpose, whether he reasonably believed there was imminent peril, and the utility of his action. Thus, we hold that for a person to qualify as a rescuer under the rescue doctrine, he must satisfy a three-pronged test: He must have (1) intended to aid or rescue a person whom he, (2) reasonably believed was in imminent peril, and (3) acted in such a way that could have reasonably succeeded or did succeed in preventing or alleviating such peril.

A. Standard of Review

¶13 The question of Garcia's status as a rescuer arose in the context of whether Colorado Cab owed Garcia a duty. "Whether a defendant owes a legal duty to a plaintiff is a question of law." Westin Operator, LLC v. Groh , 2015 CO 25, ¶ 18, 347 P.3d 606, 611. Further, because the controlling facts are undisputed, "the legal effect of those facts [also] constitutes a question of law," which we review de novo. Hicks v. Londre , 125 P.3d 452, 455 (Colo. 2005).

B. The Rescue Doctrine

¶14 The rescue doctrine traces back to then-Judge Cardozo's opinion in Wagner . In Wagner , the plaintiff and his cousin boarded a packed train. 133 N.E. at 437. Sometime after the train began moving, the cousin was thrown from it after the conductor failed to close the train's doors. Id. The plaintiff exited the train to search for his cousin underneath a nearby bridge, and he ultimately fell off the bridge's trestle. Id. On the relationship among the law, human instinct, and rescuers, the court recognized that people act instinctively to help another in peril:

Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief. The law does not ignore these reactions of the mind in tracing conduct to consequences. It recognizes them as normal. It places their effects within the range of the natural and probable. The wrong that imperils life is a wrong to the imperiled victim; it is a wrong also to his rescuer .... The risk of rescue, if only it be not wanton, is born of the occasion. The emergency begets the man. The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.

Id. at 437–48. The court then remanded the case for a trial because the question of whether the plaintiff, in his rescue attempt, "was foolhardy or reasonable in the light of the emergency confronting him" was a question for the jury. Id. at 438.

¶15 In Colorado, neither this court nor the court of appeals has opined on the rescue doctrine at length since Wagner , but both courts have provided guidance on it. In Maloney v. Jussel , 125 Colo. 125, 241 P.2d 862, 863 (1952), two cars collided, causing one of the car's passengers to be thrown from the front seat to the floor of the car. So as not to aggravate her injuries, she was told by her fellow passengers to stay still. Id. The plaintiff, having heard the sound of the crash, exited his home to investigate it. Id. at 864. He approached the car and spoke with the thrown passenger, and, while talking with her, he was then hit by another car and injured. Id. We concluded that the plaintiff did not qualify as a rescuer because the passenger was not in imminent peril and thus there was nothing for the plaintiff to rescue her from. Id. at 867. Similarly, in Connelly v. Redman Development Corp. , 533 P.2d 53, 54–55 (Colo. App. 1975), the court of appeals concluded that the plaintiff, who slipped when investigating a baby's cry, could not qualify as a rescuer because there was no evidence that the baby was in imminent...