Guerrero v. Alaska Housing Finance Corp.

• Decision Date: 04 November 2005
• Docket Number: No. S-11024.,S-11024.
• Citation: 123 P.3d 966
• Parties: Alexander E. GUERRERO, a minor child, by his next friend and father, Cristian GUERRERO; Cristian Guerrero and Juana Guerrero, individually, Appellants, v. ALASKA HOUSING FINANCE CORPORATION and State of Alaska, Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Appellees.
• Court: Alaska Supreme Court

123 P.3d 966

Alexander E. GUERRERO, a minor child, by his next friend and father, Cristian GUERRERO; Cristian Guerrero and Juana Guerrero, individually, Appellants, v. ALASKA HOUSING FINANCE CORPORATION and State of Alaska, Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Appellees.

No. S-11024.

Supreme Court of Alaska.

November 4, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Philip Paul Weidner, Weidner & Associates, Inc., Anchorage for Appellants.

David Karl Gross and Stephen H. Hutchings, Birch, Horton, Bittner and Cherot, Anchorage, for Appellee Alaska Housing Finance Corporation.

Venable Vermont, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Anchorage, and Gregg D. Renkes, Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellee State of Alaska, Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

Before: BRYNER, Chief Justice, MATTHEWS, EASTAUGH, FABE, and CARPENETI, Justices.

OPINION

BRYNER, Chief Justice.

I. INTRODUCTION

Alexander Guerrero was hit by a car as he crossed a busy street near a public housing complex where he and his family were living. His parents sued the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (the department), which built and maintained the street, and the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (the corporation), which owned and operated the housing complex. The Guerreros alleged negligent design, construction, maintenance, and failure to warn. The superior court dismissed the Guerreros' complaint for failing to state a viable claim, ruling that the department was immune and the corporation owed no duty to protect tenants from injury off-premises. We reversed and remanded for further proceedings, finding the complaint sufficient on its face to allege potentially viable claims against both defendants.¹

On remand, the superior court allowed discovery to proceed but eventually granted summary judgment to both defendants, finding that the record revealed no grounds for requiring the corporation to protect Guerrero from off-premises danger, and no grounds for a viable claim against the department. We affirm as to the corporation, but reverse in part as to the department, holding that the record contains evidence that is at least minimally sufficient to show that the department might have owed and breached an operational duty to post adequate warning signs.

II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

This is the second time this case has come before us. We summarized the relevant facts in the first appeal, Guerrero v. Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, State of Alaska, Department of Public Transportation (Guerrero I):

Five-year-old Alexander Guerrero was hit by a car and severely injured as he attempted to cross C Street near its intersection with 22nd Avenue in Anchorage.² The section of C Street where the accident occurred is part of a traffic couplet on A and C Streets (the A/C Couplet)¹ that was built by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (the department). At the time of the accident, Alexander and his family lived at the Loussac Family Housing Complex (the Loussac Complex), a low-income housing project sponsored by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (the corporation), a public corporation within the Alaska Department of Revenue.² The Loussac Complex is directly adjacent to the accident scene, situated between A Street on the east, C Street on the west, 20th Avenue on the north, and 22nd Avenue on the south.

The Guerreros sued the department and the corporation, alleging negligence in the design, construction, and maintenance of the A/C Couplet and related pedestrian systems in the vicinity of C Street and 22nd Avenue as they relate to the occupants of the Loussac Complex. They also alleged that the corporation had a duty as a landlord to ensure

¹ The A/C traffic couplet consists of two multi-lane, one-way streets — A Street and C Street — that run in opposite directions and are designed to channel rush-hour traffic smoothly into and out of the downtown Anchorage area.

² See AS 18.56.020 that conditions on its property did not subject tenants to hazards on C Street.

The department and the corporation moved to dismiss under Alaska Civil Rule 12(b)(6). The department claimed discretionary function immunity under AS 09.50.250(1). The corporation argued, first, that its duty as a landlord did not extend beyond its property and, second, that it, too, was immune under the discretionary function statute.

....

[T]he superior court granted the defendants' motions and dismissed the case under Alaska Civil Rule 12(b)(6), concluding that the amended complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted against the department or the corporation. The court ruled that the department was entitled to discretionary function immunity under AS 09.50.250(1) because "installing or not installing safety features in specific areas is precisely the type of decision the doctrine of sovereign immunity for discretionary acts is meant to protect." The court also ruled that the corporation had no duty to protect the Guerreros from traffic hazards, finding it "firmly established that the duty of safeguarding children against obvious dangers off a landlord's property does not fall on the landowner."³

The Guerreros appealed, and we reversed. We first determined that neither the department nor the corporation had shown beyond doubt that they owed Guerrero no duty of due care. We held that the department owed a generalized duty of due care to pedestrians, and that this duty does not vanish simply because "the crossing alleged in the complaint was unlawful."⁴ We also observed that a dismissal against the corporation on the duty issue would not have been proper unless the only reasonable inference was that the corporation owed the Guerreros no duty whatsoever or owed a duty that was "clearly and vastly narrower in scope" than the duty the Guerreros asserted.⁵ We noted that we had never ruled "that a landlord's duty cannot extend off-premises under certain circumstances" and that "the corporation acknowledge[d] that it owe[d] a general duty to protect its tenants from danger."⁶ And we found that a determination of the scope of the corporation's duty would depend on, among other things, whether the corporation had "obstruct[ed] access to a safe pedestrian underpass at 19th Avenue and C Street," had "funneled pedestrians ... toward the intersection at 22nd Avenue and C Street," and whether the corporation had "undertake[n] off-site responsibilities," had "influenced the project's design or plans" or "retained a measure of influence or control over the adjoining roadway."⁷ Because these questions could not be resolved on the basis of the complaint alone, we held the corporation had failed to establish that the scope of its duty to the Guerreros was "vastly narrower" than the duty the Guerreros asserted.⁸

We further held that the defendants had not established that the claims against them were barred by discretionary function immunity. We emphasized that "what qualifies [for discretionary function immunity] often depends more on the factual circumstances surrounding an agency's actions than it does on the actions' inherent nature."⁹ And we pointed to the fact that where we have upheld orders of dismissal, "we based our ruling on an extensive factual record."¹⁰ We observed that the superior court had dismissed the case at an early stage in the proceedings, when "the Guerreros [had] had no opportunity to present evidence establishing the specific facts of their case."¹¹ We concluded that the case should not have been dismissed without discovery. Accordingly we reversed the superior court's dismissal against both the department and the corporation and remanded so that the Guerreros would have the opportunity to conduct discovery.¹²

After the parties conducted discovery on remand, the department and the corporation filed motions for summary judgment, again arguing that they should prevail because they owed the Guerreros no duty and were protected by discretionary function immunity. The superior court granted summary judgment to both defendants.

The Guerreros appeal.

III. DISCUSSION

A. Standard of Review

To prevail on a motion for summary judgment, the moving party must offer admissible evidence demonstrating that there are no disputed issues of material fact and "the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law."¹³ Once the moving party has made a prima facie showing that there is no genuine issue of material fact, the burden shifts to the non-moving party to "demonstrate that a genuine issue of fact exists to be litigated by showing that it can produce admissible evidence reasonably tending to dispute the movant's evidence."¹⁴ Because the validity of a trial court's ruling on summary judgment presents questions of law, we review the court's ruling independently,¹⁵ basing our review on the entire trial court record — "`the affidavits, depositions, admissions, answers to interrogatories and similar material.'"¹⁶ In considering these materials, we give "the non-moving party ... the benefit of all reasonable inferences which can be drawn from the proffered evidence."¹⁷

B. The Corporation's Potential Liability

The Guerreros initially challenge the superior court's order granting summary judgment to the corporation. In issuing this order, the superior court found that nothing the corporation could have done would have prevented the harm. The court also found that the corporation's decision not to fence off the housing project or to warn tenants of the dangers posed by C Street traffic did not enhance those dangers. The court reasoned that Guerrero, upon leaving Loussac Manor, "would have ended up on the same public sidewalk faced with the same choice of whether to cross the street at the designated areas" regardless of any safety measures taken by the corporation. The court further noted that the location of the egress route did not "eject[] children ... into a busy street" but instead...