Hage v. Stade
| Decision Date | 23 March 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 50243.,50243. |
| Citation | 304 NW 2d 283 |
| Parties | Loren HAGE, etc., Appellant, Joan B. Ben, Trustee for Natural Guardian of the Heirs and Next-of-Kin of Marvin P. Ben, Appellant, v. Catherine A. STADE, deceased, d. b. a. Stratford Hotel et al, Defendants, Minnesota Department of Public Safety et al, Respondents. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Thysell Gjevre McLarnan Hannaher Vaa & Skatvold and Galen J. Vaa, Moorhead, for Hage, etc.
Lewis Price & Michalski and Michael J. Michalski, Windom, for Ben.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Richard B. Allyn, Sol. Gen. and David W. McKenna, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, for respondents.
Reheard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.
Plaintiffs, as trustees for the heirs of 13 people who died in a hotel fire on January 28, 1977, brought wrongful death actions against the owner of the hotel (Catherine Stade, d. b. a. Stratford Hotel); the City of Breckenridge, where the hotel was located; the State of Minnesota; the Minnesota Department and Commissioner of Public Safety; the Department of Public Health; the Office of State Fire Marshal; and Wesley Werner, individually and as State Fire Marshal. The District Court of Wilkin County granted summary judgment to defendants City of Breckenridge, the State of Minnesota, and all state agencies.
Plaintiffs appeal from the portion of the trial court's order granting summary judgment to the State of Minnesota and its agencies. We affirm.
The Stratford Hotel in Breckenridge, Minnesota, caught fire in the early hours of January 28, 1977. Plaintiffs' decedents were guests in the hotel that night. One hotel guest who was awakened by the fire was rescued from his room. The other guests, as well as a hotel employee and Catherine Stade, the owner of the hotel, died in the fire.
None of the persons present at the scene of the fire heard an alarm from the hotel before or during the fire. The only alarm in the hotel was a manual one. The alarm switch was located approximately 10 feet from the desk in the hotel lobby. Catherine Stade was stationed at the hotel desk that night. She was 81 years old, partially crippled, and apparently was overcome by smoke before she could get to the fire alarm.
The actual source of the fire is unknown, but several witnesses testified that it may have been caused by arson. Factors which might have contributed to the spread of the blaze and the lack of warning to the occupants of the hotel include the absence of smoke detectors and sprinklers in the hotel, the wooden interior construction, open stairwells and transoms above room doors, and flammable materials stored in the basement of the hotel.
The Stratford was last inspected by Deputy State Fire Marshal C. C. Tallman on June 11, 1975. This was several months before the Uniform Fire Code was adopted in Minnesota by the Commissioner of Public Safety through the Division of the Fire Marshal on October 3, 1975. The Stratford was not inspected by a state official subsequent to this time, although it was inspected by the Fire Chief of Breckenridge, Richard Thompson, in June 1976. In the past, when Tallman had mentioned potential fire hazards to Stade after his inspections, she usually corrected them promptly.
The issue presented is: Did the trial court properly grant respondents' motion for summary judgment on the issue of the liability of the State of Minnesota and its agents for alleged negligent fire safety inspection and enforcement at the Stratford Hotel?
The thrust of plaintiffs' claims is that the State of Minnesota and its agents negligently failed to enforce proper fire safety measures at the Stratford Hotel and that this failure directly contributed to the death of plaintiffs' decedents. Plaintiffs argue that state agents failed to perform a required annual inspection of the hotel, negligently conducted the inspections that did take place, and failed to require correction of safety hazards known to them. The trial court did not reach the issue of whether respondents had been negligent. Instead, the trial court concluded that the state had undertaken to enact fire safety regulations and perform inspections for the benefit of the public as a whole and not to protect a particular class of persons. Therefore, negligent inspection by a state agency did not breach a duty to third parties, and the third parties (here, plaintiffs) did not have a cause of action against the state. We agree with the trial court that the state can only be liable for negligent omissions if it owes a special duty to a particular class of persons.
The distinction between a public duty and a special duty was recently discussed and reaffirmed by this court in Cracraft v. City of St. Louis Park, 279 N.W.2d 801 (Minn. 1979). In Cracraft, the City of St. Louis Park had enacted a fire prevention ordinance which provided that all places of public assembly must be inspected at least once every month. Pursuant to the ordinance, a city inspector inspected a high school. He found no major violations, and sent a letter to school officials outlining the minor violations that he had discovered. Forty-four days after his inspection, a large drum of duplicating fluid ignited on the loading dock of the school, which was adjacent to the football field. Two students were killed and a third was severely injured. The presence of the drum on the dock was a violation of the city fire code.
This court held in Cracraft that although the common-law doctrine of sovereign immunity from tort liability had been abolished by the Minnesota Legislature, Minn.Stat. § 3.736 (1978), in response to our decision in Nieting v. Blondell, 306 Minn. 122, 235 N.W.2d 597 (1975), the distinction between public duties and special duties is still valid. A duty owed to the public in general cannot be the basis of a negligence action, but a special duty owed to individual members of the public or to a special class can be the basis of such a claim. As stated in Cracraft:
A municipality does not owe any individual a duty of care merely by the fact that it enacts a general ordinance requiring fire code inspection or by the fact that it undertakes an inspection for fire code violations. A duty of care arises only when there are additional indicia that the municipality has undertaken the responsibility of not only protecting itself, but also undertaken the responsibility of protecting a particular class of persons from the risks associated with the fire code violations.
The Cracraft opinion enumerates four factors that should be considered in determining whether a government entity has assumed a special duty to act for the protection of others: first, the government's knowledge of the dangerous condition; second, reasonable reliance by persons on the government's representations and conduct (not reliance on the inspections in general, but on specific actions or representations which cause the persons to forego other alternatives for protecting themselves); third, an ordinance or statute setting forth mandatory acts clearly for the protection of a particular class of persons; and finally, the government's use of due care to avoid increasing the risk of harm. 279 N.W.2d at 806-07.
Applying our analysis in Cracraft to the instant case, we conclude that the trial court was correct in holding that the second and fourth factors are not present; namely, specific reliance on the government's representations, and a lack of due care by the government which increased the risk of harm.
In Cracraft, the law under consideration was a city ordinance that required the city to inspect and correct fire code violations in places of public assembly. We found that the ordinance did not create a mandatory duty for the benefit of a particular class of persons as follows:
The municipality\'s own ordinances require that it undertake inspections for fire code violations. However, such inspections are required for the purpose of protecting the interests of the municipality as a whole against the fire hazards of the person inspected. The inspections are not undertaken for the purpose of assuring either the person inspected or third persons that the building is free from all fire hazards, just as the state\'s issuance of a driver\'s license is no assurance that the licensed person will be a safe driver. Because the ordinances are designed to protect the municipality\'s own interests, rather than the interests of a particular class of individuals, only a "public" duty to inspect is created.
279 N.W.2d at 805 (footnote omitted). Similarly, in Hoffert v. Owatonna Inn Towne Motel, Inc., 293 Minn. 220, 199 N.W.2d 158 (1972), we held that a building code ordinance did not create a special duty owed to the plaintiffs and stated:
Building codes, the issuance of building permits, and building inspections are devices used by municipalities to make sure that construction within the corporate limits of the municipality meets the standards established. As such, they are designed to protect the public and are not meant to be an insurance policy by which the municipality guarantees that each building is built in compliance with the building codes and zoning codes.
293 Minn. at 223, 199 N.W.2d at 160. The same result is required with respect to Minn.Stat. § 299F.46, subd. 2 (1976) under consideration here. This statute establishes general fire inspection and fire code enforcement requirements that are applicable to "hotels" within the statutory definition. As in Cracraft, it is apparent that the statute benefits the public as a whole protecting against fire hazards associated with "hotels." There is no indication that the state, by the enactment of this statute, has voluntarily assumed "the responsibility of protecting a particular class of persons from the risks associated with fire code violations." 279 N.W.2d at 806.
It is argued that this statute is distinguishable from the...
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