Patterson v. Sacramento City School Dist.

• Decision Date: 25 September 2007
• Docket Number: No. C052703.,C052703.
• Citation: 66 Cal.Rptr.3d 337,155 Cal.App.4th 821
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: James PATTERSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SACRAMENTO CITY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, Defendant and Respondent.

66 Cal.Rptr.3d 337

155 Cal.App.4th 821

James PATTERSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SACRAMENTO CITY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, Defendant and Respondent.

No. C052703.

Court of Appeal, Third District.

September 25, 2007.

Gurnee & Daniels and Jerry M. Duncan, John A. Mason, Roseville; Cable Law Offices and Keith D. Cable, Gold River, for Plaintiff and Appellant.

LaPlante, Spinelli, Donald & Nott and Domenic D. Spinelli, Sacramento, Crystal L. Waitkus, for Defendant and Respondent.

CANTIL-SAKAUYE, J.

Plaintiff James Patterson was injured while participating in a truck driver training course. Defendant Sacramento City Unified School District (District) offered the course as part of its adult education program. Patterson sued the District for negligent supervision. The trial court granted the District's motion for summary judgment, ruling that the doctrine of primary assumption of risk barred Patterson's negligence claim.

On appeal, Patterson contends judgment must be reversed because: (1) the court improperly overruled a finding of duty in the District's first summary judgment motion; (2) assumption of risk does not apply in the circumstances of this case; and (3) even if the assumption of risk doctrine applies, there are triable issues of fact on whether the District acted recklessly. We agree with plaintiff that assumption of the risk does not apply in these circumstances and shall reverse the judgment.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In spring 2003, Patterson enrolled in the District's California Heavy Duty Truck Driving Program. The truck driving course provided students with the training and hands-on experience they needed to become professional truck drivers. It consisted of three six-week segments: classroom instruction; hands-on training; and on-the-road experience. In order to pass the course, students were required to participate in community service projects as part of their hands-on training and on-the-road experience.

The District assigned credentialed heavy-duty truck driving instructors to teach each segment of the course. Joe Arcuri and Ward Allen taught the second and third segments. Allen also served as field instructor and supervisor for the community service projects.

On May 9, 2003, during the first week of the hands-on segment of the training course, Patterson and several other students participated in a community service project which involved picking up bleachers from several locations, loading them onto a flat bed trailer attached to a tractor, and transporting them to the site of a rugby tournament. The classroom curriculum covered freight loading in a basic sense, but did not cover the specifics of loading flat bed trucks or trailers. According to the instructors, a primary goal of the community service assignment was to teach students how to load the trailers safely. The instructors described the loading of cargo as a "hands-on kind of thing" that involved common sense. The instructors typically critiqued the students after they loaded the cargo.

Allen was responsible for instructing Patterson and the other students on loading the bleachers on the flat bed trailer. The bed of the trailer was between 96 and 102 inches wide and approximately five feet off the ground. Allen was present when the students picked up aluminum bleachers at the first location and loaded them on the trailer without incident. He told the students to pick up the bleachers at the second location on their own. Allen did not know how much prior training or experience his students had in loading trailers.

The bleachers at the second location were made of heavy wood. Allen had not seen the wooden bleachers before assigning the students to pick them up. Because there were no teachers present, and none of the students was considered to be in charge, the unsupervised students decided as a group how to load the wooden bleachers. It took six students to carry each section of wooden bleachers. Patterson and a student named Don Cruse stood on the trailer bed. Patterson had never climbed on the flat bed trailer before he and the other students arrived at the second pick-up location. Patterson and Cruse pulled on the wooden bleachers while the remaining students pushed the bleachers from below. Patterson cautioned the students who were pushing to slow down when he recognized that he was running out of room at the edge of the trailer. Instead, the students gave the bleachers "one big push," and Patterson fell backward off the trailer.

DISCUSSION

I. Standard of Review

The trial court shall grant defendant's motion for summary judgment "if all the papers submitted show that there is no triable issue as to any material fact and that [defendant] is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." (Code Civ. Proa, § 437c, subd. (c).)¹ A defendant moving for summary judgment meets its burden of showing that there is no merit to a cause of action by showing that one or more elements of the cause of action cannot be established or that there is a complete defense to that cause of action. (§ 437c, subd. (p)(2).) Once the defendant has made the required showing, the burden shifts back to the plaintiff to show that a triable issue of one or more material facts exists as to that cause of action or defense. (Ibid.; Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2001) 25 Cal.th 826, 849, 853, 107 Cal. Rptr.2d 841, 24 P.3d 493.)

"`When a defendant moves for summary judgment on the basis of implied assumption of the risk, he or she has the burden of establishing the plaintiffs primary assumption of the risk by demonstrating that the defendant owed no legal duty to the plaintiff to prevent the harm of which the plaintiff complains.' [Citation.] Determining whether the primary assumption of risk doctrine applies is a legal question to be decided by the court. (Knight [v. Jewett (1992) 3 Cal.4th 296, 313, 11 Cal.Rptr .2d 2, 834 P.2d 696 (Knight) ] [Citation.].)" (Moser v. Ratinoff (2003) 105 Cal.App.4th 1211, 1217, 130 Cal. Rptr.2d 198.)

On appeal from the entry of summary judgment, we review the record de novo "to determine whether the moving party was entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law or whether genuine issues of material fact remain. [Citation.]" (Campbell v. Derylo (1999) 75 Cal.App.4th 823, 826, 89 Cal.Rptr.2d 519.)

II. The Second Motion For Summary Judgment

Judge Cecil heard the District's first motion for summary judgment in September 2005. At that point in the proceedings, the District argued that there was no statutory basis for imposing liability "for negligent supervision, training, and instruction of adult students and general negligence as a matter of law...." Judge Cecil denied the motion in a ruling that referred to Government Code sections 815 and 820 and read in part: "The facts are sufficient to show there was a duty on the part of the school district's employees to properly supervise and instruct plaintiff on the loading of wooden bleachers on a flat bed trailer." Patterson argues that by considering and granting the District's second motion for summary judgment in March 2006, Judge Chang improperly overruled Judge Cecil's earlier ruling. There is no merit in this argument.

Code of Civil Procedure section 437c, subdivision (f)(2) states that a party may not move for summary judgment based on issues asserted in a prior motion for summary adjudication. To determine whether a second summary judgment motion is proper, courts consider whether it involves "newly discovered facts or circumstances or a change of law." (Schachter v. Citigroup, Inc. (2005) 126 Cal.App.4th 726, 739, 23 Cal.Rptr.3d 920; see Bagley v. TRW, Inc. (1999) 73 Cal.App.4th 1092, 1097, 86 Cal.Rptr.2d 909 (Bagley) [second motion showed no new law and listed no new material facts in the separate statement].)

Although Patterson is correct that both motions for summary judgment involved "duty" in a general sense, the District's two motions were not identical and involved different legal theories. The first motion focused on whether there was a statutory basis for imposing a duty; the second motion focused on whether the common law defense of assumption of risk applied to negate any claim of duty. A comparison of the arguments and material facts shows that the District's second motion for summary judgment is not simply a "reformatted, condensed, and cosmetically repackaged" version of its first motion. (Bagley, supra, 73 Cal.App.4th at p. 1097, 86 Cal.Rptr .2d 909.)

Moreover, we note that there was a change in the law following the court's September 15, 2005 ruling on the first summary judgment motion. On October 26, 2005, this court filed its opinion in Saville v. Sierra College (2005) 133 Cal. App.4th 857, 36 Cal.Rptr.3d 515 (Saville), which applied the doctrine of assumption of risk in the context of an adult education class at a public college. The District relied extensively on Saville in its second motion for summary judgment. For these reasons, we conclude that there was no procedural bar to the court's consideration of the District's second motion.

III. Duty of Care and Assumption of Risk

Patterson's complaint alleges that the District "had a duty to supervise, train, educate, instruct, and oversee the conduct of its [truck driver training] students" on proper techniques for loading and unloading flat bed trucks and trailers and "to exercise ordinary care to protect students from the type of injury" that Patterson suffered. The District maintains that under the doctrine of assumption of risk, it owed Patterson no duty of care.

Historically, the concept of duty developed in the late 19th century as a legal device was "designed to curtail the feared propensities of juries toward liberal awards." (Dillon v. Legg (1968) 68 Cal.2d 728, 734, 69 Cal.Rptr. 72, 441 P.2d 912 (Dillon).) The essential question in a duty analysis is "`whether the plaintiffs interests are entitled to legal protection against the defendant's conduct.... [Duty] is a shorthand statement...