Knodle v. Waikiki Gateway Hotel, Inc.

• Decision Date: 10 September 1987
• Docket Number: No. 9392,9392
• Citation: 742 P.2d 377,69 Haw. 376
• Parties: John KNODLE, individually and as the Administrator of the Estate of Linda Kay Knodle, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WAIKIKI GATEWAY HOTEL, INC., Hyatt Corporation, Continental Air Lines, Inc., Northridge Industries, Inc., Continental-Kalakaua Hotel Corporation, and Waikiki Gateway Hotel Associates, Defendants-Appellees, and George Patrick Murphy, Defendant.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 377

742 P.2d 377

69 Haw. 376

John KNODLE, individually and as the Administrator of the Estate of Linda Kay Knodle, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WAIKIKI GATEWAY HOTEL, INC., Hyatt Corporation, Continental

Air Lines, Inc., Northridge Industries, Inc.,

Continental-Kalakaua Hotel Corporation, and Waikiki Gateway

Hotel Associates, Defendants-Appellees,

and

George Patrick Murphy, Defendant.

No. 9392.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

Sept. 10, 1987.

Syllabus by the Court

1. When the trial court requires a jury to return a special verdict in the form of a special written finding upon each issue of fact, the court should explain the law of the case, point out the essentials to be proved on one side or the other, and bring into view the relation of the particular evidence adduced to the particular issue involved.

2. Tersely stated, the elements of a cause of action founded on negligence are: 1) a duty or obligation recognized by the law requiring the defendant to conform to a certain standard of conduct for the protection of others against unreasonable risks; 2) a failure on the defendant's part to conform to the standard required: a breach of the duty; 3) a reasonably close causal connection between the conduct and the resulting injury; and 4) actual loss or damage resulting to the interests of another.

3. The existence of a duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, that is, whether such a relation exists between the parties that the community will impose a legal obligation upon one for the benefit of the other or, more simply, whether the interest of the plaintiff which has suffered invasion was entitled to legal protection at the hands of the defendant, is entirely a question of law.

4. Whether there was a breach of duty or not, i.e. whether there was a failure on the defendant's part to exercise reasonable care, is a question for the trier of fact. For under the prevailing rule, duty is bounded by the foreseeable range of danger, and reasonable foreseeability of harm is the very prototype of the question a jury must pass upon in particularizing the standard of conduct in the case before it.

5. The presence of a reasonably close connection between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiff's injury, i.e. whether the breach of duty was more likely than not a substantial factor in causing the harm complained of, is normally a question for the jury.

6. It is the court's function to direct the jury as to what items of damages they may consider and the jury's function to determine which of such items were actually suffered. The proper amount of damages is within the exclusive province of the jury since jurors are the sole judges of all disputed questions of fact.

7. In the trial of a negligence action, apart from directing the court's business in general, passing on the admissibility of evidence and the like, the judge has three well-defined major functions. He must decide whether such a relation exists between the parties that the community would impose a legal obligation upon one for the benefit of the other; he must decide on the whole evidence relating to a particular issue of fact whether more than one reasonable inference can be drawn, that is whether there is an issue for the jury's determination; and if both of the preceding functions have been exercised favorably for the plaintiff, then the judge must submit the factual issues that may have been raised to the jury with such instructions as will enable the jury to deal with them intelligently.

8. When the relation is a special one of innkeeper and guest, the former is under a duty to take reasonable action to protect the latter against unreasonable risk of physical harm. The duty of an innkeeper or hotel operator to protect his guest extends to unreasonable risks arising out of his own conduct or the condition of his land and chattels. It extends also to unreasonable risks arising from the acts of third persons, whether they be innocent, negligent, intentional, or criminal, though generally, a defendant is not responsible for (that is, he has no duty to control) the behavior of a third person. The existence of a special relationship between the defendant and either the third person who may threaten harm or the party who is the potential victim of the harm, however, gives the latter a right to protection from unreasonable risks arising from the acts of the third person.

9. In the trial of a negligence action, whether the defendant's conduct was reasonable in the circumstances is for the jury to decide. What is reasonable care on the part of the defendant is what a reasonable and prudent person would have done under the circumstances. The conduct of this mythical person will vary with the situation with which he is confronted. For what is reasonable and prudent in the particular circumstances is marked out by the foreseeable range of danger.

10. Courts have gone to unusual pains to emphasize the abstract and hypothetical character of the reasonable and prudent person. He is not to be identified with any ordinary individual who might occasionally do unreasonable things; he is a prudent and careful person who is always up to standard. Nor is it proper to identify him with any member of the very jury which is to apply the standard; he is rather a personification of a community ideal of reasonable behavior, determined by the jury's social judgment.

11. In the context of a negligence action, foreseeable danger means a recognizable danger, based upon some knowledge of the existing facts and some reasonable belief that harm may possibly follow.

12. The test of what is reasonably foreseeable is not one of a balance of probabilities. That the danger will more probably than otherwise not be encountered on a particular occasion does not dispense with the exercise of care. The test is whether there is some probability of harm sufficiently serious that a reasonable and prudent person would take precautions to avoid it. As the gravity of the possible harm increases, the apparent likelihood of its occurrence need be correspondingly less to generate a duty of precaution. And against this probability and gravity of the risk must be balanced in every case the utility of the type of conduct in question.

13. "Proximate cause," the term employed by many courts to characterize a legally sufficient causal relation, is in itself an unfortunate term. It might have been apt in an earlier time; but in the complex society of the late twentieth century, a negligent tort is as likely as not to have plural or concurring causes. And it is not only the "next" or "nearest" cause that the law considers close enough to make a defendant responsible for the injury suffered by the plaintiff.

14. Some courts stepping away from literal "proximate causation" adopted a "but for" rule. Thereunder, the defendant's conduct is a cause of the event if the event would not have occurred but for that conduct; conversely, the defendant's conduct is not a cause of the event if the event would have occurred without it. The test serves to explain culpable causation in most cases. The problem with the "but for" test is that it may not cover the situation where two or more causes can be perceived yet none of them alone would have produced the resulting harm.

15. The inadequacies in earlier rules or tests for determining the necessary causal connection led to a formulation emphasizing legal significance rather than factual quantum. Under the guidelines developed by the American Law Institute in its Restatement of Torts, the actor's negligent conduct is a legal cause of harm to another if his conduct is a substantial factor in bringing about the harm.

16. In order to hold the defendant liable for the plaintiff's injuries, the defendant's negligence need not have been the whole cause or the only factor in bringing about the harm. It is enough that his negligence was a substantial factor in causing plaintiff's injuries.

17. Erroneous instructions are presumptively harmful. Unless the record indicates the erroneous instructions were harmless, the judgment must be vacated.

Paul A. Lynch (Michael R. Marsh and Mark S. Milker, with him on brief, Case & Lynch, of counsel), Honolulu, for plaintiff-appellant.

Stephen B. MacDonald (Susan Oki Mollway and Patricia J. McHenry, with him on brief, Cades, Schutte, Fleming & Wright, of counsel), Honolulu, for defendants-appellees.

Before LUM, C.J., NAKAMURA, PADGETT, and HAYASHI, JJ., and Intermediate Court of Appeals Associate Judge TANAKA in Place of WAKATSUKI, J., disqualified.

NAKAMURA, Justice.

Linda Kay Knodle, a flight attendant then employed by Continental Air Lines, Inc., was murdered by George Patrick Murphy on November 26, 1974 in the Waikiki Gateway Hotel. John Knodle, her father, suing on his own behalf and as the administrator of her estate, brought a multi-count tort action in the Circuit Court of the First Circuit against Murphy, Continental Air Lines, and the hotel, its owners, and its operators. After default was entered against Murphy and summary judgment was awarded to Continental Air Lines, ¹ the negligence claims against the remaining defendants were tried before a jury. The jury, on interrogatories propounded by the trial judge, returned a special verdict finding Waikiki Gateway Hotel Associates, Hyatt Corporation, Continental-Kalakaua Hotel Corp., and Northridge Industries, Inc., the hotel's owners and operators, each "had a duty to take reasonable measures to safeguard Linda Kay Knodle from the foreseeable criminal acts of third parties," but none of them "breached that duty." The plaintiff appeals from the judgment that followed, urging the trial judge erred by not permitting "evidence of all reported criminal activity at and near the hotel" to be admitted at trial, by improperly instructing the jury "on proximate causation and foreseeability," and by not granting "judgment notwithstanding the verdict or, at the least, a new trial."

We...