Manley v. Hallbauer

• Decision Date: 23 December 2016
• Docket Number: No. 115,531,115,531
• Citation: 387 P.3d 185
• Parties: Lori Leann MANLEY, Individually and as Special Administrator for the Estate of Darren R. Manley, Deceased, Amanda Tubbs, and Derrick Manley, Appellants, v. Steven B. HALLBAUER and Kathie M. Hallbauer, Appellees.
• Court: Kansas Court of Appeals

387 P.3d 185

Lori Leann MANLEY, Individually and as Special Administrator for the Estate of Darren R. Manley, Deceased, Amanda Tubbs, and Derrick Manley, Appellants,

v.Steven B. HALLBAUER and Kathie M. Hallbauer, Appellees.

No. 115,531

Court of Appeals of Kansas.

Filed December 23, 2016

Fred Spigarelli, of The Spigarelli Law Firm, of Pittsburg, for appellants.

Vince P. Wheeler, of Hite, Fanning & Honeyman L.L.P., of Wichita, for appellees.

Before Hill, P.J., Buser and Leben, JJ.

Leben, J.:

One afternoon in September 2011, in a rural part of Labette County, Darren Manley was driving north on one gravel road while John Patton was driving west on another, and their trucks collided at the unsigned intersection of those two roads. Manley was killed. His family, through his estate, sued the County, Patton, and the Hallbauers, who own the property at the southeast corner of the intersection.

The Manleys settled with both the County and Patton. Everyone agrees that at the time of the accident, trees and vegetation growing on the Hallbauers' property obstructed the view of drivers traveling where Manley and Patton had been. The district court granted the Hallbauers' motion for summary judgment, finding that under Kansas caselaw, landowners don't owe a duty to drivers to maintain visibility at intersections by trimming the trees on their property. We must determine whether its legal ruling—that the owner of a rural property doesn't have a duty to cut down or trim trees on the property so that drivers have good visibility at an adjacent intersection—was correct.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The facts aren't substantially contested. On the afternoon of September 14, 2011, at the intersection of Anderson Road and 20000 Road in Labette County, Darren Manley was killed when his truck collided with John Patton's truck. Manley was headed north on Anderson Road, which runs north and south. Patton was headed west on 20000 Road, which runs east and west. Both are gravel roads.

The intersection did not have any traffic signs. A professional engineer testified that he thought the roads carried fewer than 400 cars a day, making them both "low volume" roads. Labette County's director of public works likewise testified that her office had studied the average daily traffic of these two roads in January 2015 and found they were both "low volume" roads. The engineer also noted that it wasn't uncommon for rural intersections in Labette and surrounding counties to have restricted visibility due to crops or trees. According to the officers who investigated the accident, there was no evidence that either driver had tried to brake or evade the collision.

The Hallbauers own and live on about 11 acres of land at the southeast corner of the Anderson/20000 intersection. At the time of the accident, a row of trees stretched along their property line from the intersection to the south, and another row followed their property line from the intersection to the east. According to the officers who investigated the accident, there were also more trees in the interior of the property, "making it impossible for westbound traffic to see approaching northbound traffic" and vice versa. The Manleys' engineering expert said he believed that the accident was caused by the lack of traffic signs and the obstructed visibility created by the Hallbauers' trees.

The trees had been on the Hallbauers' property when they bought the land in 2006 and hadn't changed much since then. The Hallbauers knew that the trees obstructed the view at the intersection, and they had been slowly cutting them down over time. Steven Hallbauer said that from the intersection heading south, the view was completely obstructed for 50 or 60 feet. But until this accident, the Hallbauers hadn't received any complaints from the County or anyone else about the trees on their property. And according to Labette County's director of public works, this crash was the first two-vehicle accident at this intersection.

After the accident, Manley's estate, through his wife, son, and daughter, brought a wrongful-death lawsuit against Labette County, Patton (the driver of the other car), and the Hallbauers. The Manleys settled their claims against Patton and the County.

The Hallbauers filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that they didn't owe a duty to drivers to trim the trees on their property to maintain visibility at the intersection and therefore weren't liable for Manley's death in the car accident. The district court agreed; it granted the Hallbauers' motion and certified its judgment as final under K.S.A. 2015 Supp. 60–254(b).

The Manleys have appealed to our court.

ANALYSIS

The Manleys argue that the Hallbauers owed a duty to Manley to trim their trees to maintain visibility at the intersection and that the district court was wrong to conclude otherwise. Everyone agrees that, factually, the Hallbauers' trees blocked visibility at the intersection. The question here is whether the law required the Hallbauers to do anything to remedy that situation. In other words, did the Hallbauers owe a duty to Manley?

The existence of a duty is a question of law. Elstun v. Spangles, Inc. , 289 Kan. 754, 757, 217 P.3d 450 (2009). Because it's a question of law and not a contested factual issue, it was appropriate for the district court to grant summary judgment on this question and rule on it without a full trial. See Drouhard–Nordhus v. Rosenquist , 301 Kan. 618, 622, 345 P.3d 281 (2015) (summary judgment appropriate when there's no genuine issue of material fact); Martin v. Naik , 297 Kan. 241, 245, 300 P.3d 625 (2013) (summary judgment in negligence cases appropriate only for questions of law). We owe no deference to the district court's conclusion on a question of law and must independently review whether the Hallbauers owed a duty to Manley to cut down the trees on their land to improve or maintain visibility at the intersection of Anderson and 20000 Roads. See 297 Kan. at 245, 300 P.3d 625.

The underlying legal claim is for negligence. A negligence claim requires (1) the existence of a duty, (2) the breach of that duty, (3) an injury, and (4) sufficient causal connection between the duty breached and the injury sustained (a concept lawyers call "proximate causation"). Smith v. Kansas Gas Service Co. , 285 Kan. 33, 39, 169 P.3d 1052 (2007). Where a duty exists, a person generally has the duty to act as a reasonably prudent person would act in similar circumstances. See Fieser v. Kansas Bd. of Healing Arts , 281 Kan. 268, 272, 130 P.3d 555 (2006) ; Wozniak v. Lipoff , 242 Kan. 583, 607, 750 P.2d 971 (1988).

But that duty doesn't extend to everyone in the world. In Kansas, courts apply a foreseeability test: A person owes a duty if (1) the plaintiff is a foreseeable plaintiff and (2) the probability of harm is foreseeable. Berry v. National Medical Services, Inc. , 292 Kan. 917, 920–21, 257 P.3d 287 (2011). In other words, "[t]he duty of care is intertwined with the foreseeability of harm." Shirley v. Glass , 297 Kan. 888, 900, 308 P.3d 1 (2013) ; see Berry , 292 Kan. at 920–21, 257 P.3d 287. So an individual must act like a reasonably prudent person toward another individual if there is some sort of relationship between the two individuals that justifies imposing a legal obligation on one for the benefit of the other—a relationship based on foreseeability. See Prosser and Keeton, Law of Torts § 53 (5th ed. 1984). In this case, then, the question is whether the relationship between landowners and drivers on adjacent roads creates a duty: Would a reasonable landowner have foreseen a probability of harm to motorists from the obstructed view?

Obstructed visibility at an intersection creates a risk to people who drive on the roads, so Manley, because he was just such a driver, was a foreseeable plaintiff. But was the harm itself sufficiently foreseeable? Was the risk such that a reasonable person would have done something about it? Durflinger v. Artiles , 234 Kan. 484, 489, 673 P.2d 86 (1983).

On one hand, the risk created by obstructed visibility at an intersection is the risk of a car accident, which is exactly what happened here. The Hallbauers did know that the view was obstructed and agreed that a stop sign would have made the intersection safer. On the other hand, these roads weren't heavily traveled, the County had no record of any two-car accidents at the intersection until this one, and the Hallbauers had received no complaints in the 5 years they had owned the property about their trees obstructing the view. The County's director of public works also implied that she hadn't received any complaints about visibility at this intersection (if she had, she would have taken them to the Hallbauers, and they never received any complaints from the County).

Additionally, when visibility is obstructed, drivers generally have a responsibility to drive with more caution. See Toumberlin v. Haas , 236 Kan. 138, 144, 689 P.2d 808 (1984) (quoting Lyke v. State Highway Comm. , 160 Kan. 709, 711, 165 P.2d 228 [1946] ); McCleary v. Boss , 24 Kan.App.2d 791, 794–95, 955 P.2d 127 (1997). This point is related to the long-standing rule that landowners don't have a duty to protect people who enter their property from open and obvious dangers. Miller v. Zep Mfg. Co. , 249 Kan. 34, 43, 815 P.2d 506 (1991) (relying on Restatement [Second] of Torts § 343A [1965] ). Rather than placing a duty on the landowners, this rule assumes that people should be able to protect themselves from open and obvious dangers, and it's related to foreseeability because a person may reasonably assume that others will protect themselves from open and obvious dangers. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A, comment e (1965). Here, these rules would suggest, it was reasonable for the Hallbauers to assume that drivers approaching this intersection would see that visibility was obstructed and would proceed with extra caution, making an accident less foreseeable....