Labrie v. Pace Membership Warehouse, Inc.

• Decision Date: 11 July 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-458-A,94-458-A
• Parties: Richard LABRIE v. PACE MEMBERSHIP WAREHOUSE, INC. et al. ppeal.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 867

678 A.2d 867

Richard LABRIE v. PACE MEMBERSHIP WAREHOUSE, INC. et al.

No. 94-458-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 11, 1996.

Richard S. Sahagian, for Plaintiff.

Peter Mathieu; Dennis S. Baluch, Melody A. Alger, James S. D'Ambra; Mark P. Dolan; Elizabeth F. Sullivan, Michael G. Sarli, Stuart D. Hallagan, III, Providence, William F. Ahern, Jr.; William J. Hunt, for Defendant.

OPINION

FLANDERS, Justice.

This appeal calls upon us to determine whether "the firefighter's rule" should extinguish negligence claims arising out of a routine, scheduled inspection of a merchant's sprinkler system. Because in this case no fire has been fought, no firefighter has been injured, and no exigency brought the injured fire-department employee to the scene, we answer this question in the negative.

Facts

The plaintiff, Richard Labrie, was employed as a superintendent in the Fire Alarm Division of the Warwick Fire Department when he was injured during a routine inspection of a merchant's newly installed fire-alarm and sprinkler system. Although his job was to inspect and certify fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and other fire-prevention devices, plaintiff's combat duties as a firefighter had ceased over fifteen years earlier.

On July 20, 1990, while plaintiff was inspecting this new equipment, a water-line valve ruptured, sousing plaintiff with a high-pressure power spray that injured him. The plaintiff sued the merchant-owner of the commercial premises where this accident occurred as well as various other defendants responsible for the design, manufacture, or installation of the allegedly defective sprinkler system. The defendants, Pace Membership Warehouse, Aetna Pump, Hill & Scott, Inc., Reliant Systems, Inc., and John P. Caito Corporation, moved for summary judgment, arguing that the firefighter's rule and plaintiff's assumption of the risk barred plaintiff's lawsuit. The court below agreed and dismissed plaintiff's claims.

For the reasons set forth below, we conclude that the Superior Court responded to a false alarm when it used the firefighter's rule to torch plaintiff's complaint.

Analysis

I. Firefighter's Rule

The firefighter's rule and its police officer's analogue (the rule), when applicable, bar an injured public-safety official from maintaining a negligence action against a tortfeasor whose alleged malfeasance is responsible for bringing the officer to the scene of a fire, crime, or other emergency where the officer is injured.

In Rhode Island the rule has had a limited application to those situations (such as fighting fires or crimes in progress) in which a crisis or an emergency causes the hurried intervention of public-safety officers. See Smith v. Tully, 665 A.2d 1333, 1334 (R.I.1995) (police officer fatally shot bar patron in self-defense after receiving call for assistance because patron was brandishing a knife); Mignone v. Fieldcrest Mills, 556 A.2d 35, 36 (R.I.1989) (firefighter injured by fall on water-soaked stairs while fighting fire); Cook v. Demetrakas, 108 R.I. 397, 398-99, 275 A.2d 919, 920-21 (1971) (police officer entered a defendant's premises for purpose of apprehending larceny fugitive); Beehler v. Daniels, Cornell & Co., 19 R.I. 49, 49-50, 31 A. 582, 582-83 (1895) (firefighter fell into unguarded elevator shaft while fighting fire).

In regard to property owners, the traditional scope of this rule is narrow because it is an exception to the generally applicable duty of such owners to use reasonable care for the safety of all persons reasonably expected to come onto the premises. We have favored a limited construction of the rule in this type of situation because "[w]hen this court applies the * * * rule, we extinguish an individual's right to pursue an otherwise valid cause of action. In light of this onerous result, a great many courts have limited the scope of the rule to precise fact situations." Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Vierra, 619 A.2d 436, 440 (R.I.1993).

Thus, we have never applied the rule to bar recovery in a case like this one that is devoid of the usual exigencies that are present when a public-safety officer hies to the scene of a crime, a fire, or some other crisis. Here, plaintiff's presence was not only expected by the property-owner defendant but scheduled in advance; indeed, the inspection was a planned visit where there was ample time for defendants to use reasonable care in making, designing, installing, or readying the equipment and the premises for plaintiff/inspector's review. Despite abandoning our former reliance on the old common-law land-entrant classifications to fix the duty of care owed to such persons, we have stressed that the circumstances surrounding an entrant's presence on the premises are still relevant to the analysis of whether defendant expected an entrant to be on the premises and, thus, whether defendant/property owner had the time to exercise reasonable care for the entrant's safety in light of that expectation. Mariorenzi v. Joseph DiPonte, Inc., 114 R.I. 294, 307, 333 A.2d 127, 133 (1975). ¹

We believe that when properly applied, the rule bars suit by a public-safety officer only in circumstances in which he or she is injured while confronting a crisis created by a defendant's ordinary negligence and only when he or she is injured by a risk typically associated with responding to that crisis. Aetna, 619 A.2d at 439. The rationale for this narrow exception to the general rule imposing liability on tortfeasors is that, although firefighters are trained and paid to handle emergency situations, they do not thereby forfeit all rights that they may otherwise have to recover for on-the-job injuries that they sustain owing to the negligence of others. Although owners and occupants of property would be unduly burdened if they were required to keep their premises safe for firefighters entering the premises even at unforeseeable times and in circumstances when owner/occupants have no control over the firefighters' actions while on the premises, Sherman v. Suburban Trust Co., 282 Md. 238, 243, 384 A.2d 76, 79 (1978), such concerns are not present in nonemergency situations like this one.

We recognize that many jurisdictions have so broadened the rule that it now operates as a virtual workers' compensation type of bar for all those officers employed by fire or police departments who are injured on the job; that is, it precludes recovery on any third-party tort claims whenever a defendant's negligence causes an employee of the fire or the police department to be injured in the course of his or her work. See, e.g., Horn v. Urban Investment and Development Co., 166 Ill.App.3d 62, 116 Ill.Dec. 597, 519 N.E.2d 489 (1988) (plaintiff firefighter, injured by fall on wet storeroom floor while investigating source of false alarm, may not seek redress); Rosa v. Dunkin' Donuts of Passaic, 122 N.J. 66, 583 A.2d 1129 (1991) (recovery barred when officer slipped and fell on powdered sugar in rendering assistance to unconscious employee); Zanghi v. Niagara Frontier Transportation Commission, 85 N.Y.2d 423, 649 N.E.2d 1167, 626 N.Y.S.2d 23 (1995) (no recovery for police officer who slipped and fell on snow-covered metal plate at bus station); Hoehn v. Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, 205 A.D.2d 734, 613 N.Y.S.2d 700 (1994) (police officer's common-law negligence claim for injuries suffered while moving steel plate back into position barred by firefighter's rule). Rhode Island, however, extends neither the benefits nor the burdens of its Workers' Compensation Act (WCA) to police officers and firefighters. See G.L.1956 § 28-29-2.

Other jurisdictions, in an attempt to mitigate the rule's harsh results, have created numerous exceptions to its applicability. See, e.g., Donohue v. San Francisco Housing Authority, 16 Cal.App.4th 658, 20 Cal.Rptr.2d 148 (1993) (firefighter may seek damages for slip on wet stairs during routine fire inspection); Lenthall v. Maxwell, 138 Cal.App.3d 716, 188 Cal.Rptr. 260 (1982) (officer may not recover for intentional torts related to original emergency but may recover for unrelated negligence); Berko v. Freda, 93 N.J. 81, 459 A.2d 663 (1983) (police officer may recover for intentional torts and for negligent acts unrelated to event that brought officer to scene). Finally, difficulties encountered in distinguishing among these numerous exceptions have led some jurisdictions to abolish the rule altogether. ²

By construing the rule narrowly as an exception to the general duty to exercise reasonable care, we seek to avoid either abolishing the rule entirely or else creating numerous exceptions to it. As Justice Tobriner of the California Supreme Court so eloquently concluded, "Courts should be hesitant to cut holes in the carefully woven fabric of the requirement of due care, and to deny certain selected classifications that protection." Walters v. Sloan, 20 Cal.3d 199, 217, 571 P.2d 609, 620, 142 Cal.Rptr. 152, 163 (1977) (Tobriner, Acting C.J., dissenting).

Our narrow view of the proper scope of the rule accords with the approach taken by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Wright v. Coleman, 148 Wis.2d 897, 436 N.W.2d 864 (1989). In Wright the plaintiff firefighter was injured when he slipped and fell on "glare ice" on the driveway leading up to a garage fire. Id. at 900, 436 N.W.2d at 865. The court remanded the case for a jury to determine whether the defendant property owner had exercised due care in keeping the premises reasonably safe. Id. at 909, 436 N.W.2d at 869. The court concluded that a firefighter is owed the duty of reasonable care owed to all who enter the property by invitation, except in those "narrow exceptions to liability" involving negligence "in starting a fire and failing to curtail its spread." Id. at 899-900, 904, 436 N.W.2d at 865, 867 (quoting Hass v. Chicago & North Western Ry. Co., 48 Wis.2d 321, 179 N.W.2d 885 (1970)). Thus "only in the unusual or very clear case" should the rule be...