Robertson v. Deak Perera (Miami), Inc., 80-226
| Decision Date | 24 March 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 80-226,80-226 |
| Citation | 396 So.2d 749 |
| Parties | Cheryl ROBERTSON, Appellant, v. DEAK PERERA (MIAMI), INC., Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Alldredge & Gray and James H. Gray, Jr., Miami, for appellant.
Heller & Kaplan and Daniel Neal Heller and Lisa H. Green and Robert Golden, Miami, for appellee.
Before SCHWARTZ, NESBITT and BASKIN, JJ.
Whether a dealer in Jamaican currency who fails to warn a customer that transporting Jamaican currency into Jamaica without authorization constitutes a crime under Jamaican law is answerable for negligence, is the question raised in this appeal. Appellant contends the dealer, Deak Perera (Miami), Inc., owed her a duty to warn of the danger inherent in transporting the currency into Jamaica. The trial judge disagreed and dismissed the complaint. We agree with the trial court and affirm the dismissal of the amended complaint.
According to appellant Robertson, the currency dealer located at Miami International Airport should have known the laws of the country whose currency it sold and should have foreseen and warned her against the risk. Had that been done, she asserts, she would not have suffered the embarrassment of arrest, detention, confiscation of her belongings, trial, and sentence of one day in jail to which she was subjected as a result of transporting Jamaican currency into Jamaica.
Appellant sought to recover damages predicated upon Deak Perera's negligence in failing to warn her of the danger. A cause of action in negligence, however, must be based upon a legal obligation for the benefit of another. W. Prosser, Law of Torts § 53 (4th ed. 1971). "Negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do." Pollock, Law of Torts 468 (13th ed. 1920). In the absence of a duty to the plaintiff, actionable negligence does not exist. 23 Fla.Jur., Negligence §§ 9, 10 (1959).
Appellant contends that appellee's duty stems from the contract of sale. A duty to exercise care may be created by a contract, 23 Fla.Jur., Negligence § 15 (1950), and the violation of that contractual duty may give rise to an action in tort. Here, however, appellee satisfied the contract by selling currency to appellant. No contractual violation occurred. No other duty to appellant remained to be performed.
Next, we consider appellant's contention that the potential or latent danger of transporting Jamaican currency into Jamaica imposed a duty to warn upon the seller. Under products liability law, a duty to warn exists only with regard to the manufacture or sale of a product which is potentially dangerous. A seller may be held liable for harm caused by a product which might reasonably have been expected to be capable of inflicting damage either by its nature or because it is defective. W. Prosser, Law of Torts § 96 (4th ed. 1971). The rule is entrenched in a long line of cases beginning with MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., 217 N.Y. 382, 111 N.E. 1050 (1916). In the case under consideration, the money itself was not alleged to be defective or potentially dangerous, and appellant's claim does not fall within the realm of products liability law. Appellant's damages did not result from the use of the money, but from transporting the currency into Jamaica when such conduct was prohibited by law. We therefore reject her contention.
Affirmed.
According to the complaint, a professional foreign money trader sold Jamaican currency to the unknowledgeable plaintiff at the Miami International Airport. Even though, as common sense as well as the pleading tell us, the defendant should have known from the location of the transaction that the money was bought to take it into Jamaica, and even though it also knew or, in the exercise of its expertise, should have known that it was unlawful to do so, it failed to tell its customer that this was true. 1 The utterly foreseeable result was that she was arrested and confined in Jamaica when she got there with the currency. The court says that our law does not entertain the possibility of the defendant's liability under these circumstances. I totally disagree.
The majority bases its conclusion upon the non-existence of a legal "duty" imposed upon the seller of money to reveal that the purchaser, merely by possessing it, runs a known risk of criminal prosecution. By even putting the inquiry in this way, the court essentially frames the issue in terms of the result a bootstrapping process in which courts should not indulge, at least not without acknowledging that this is being done. As Prosser says,
Th(e) concept of a relative duty is not regarded as essential by the continental law, and it has been assailed as serving no useful purpose, and producing only confusion in ours. Its artificial character is readily apparent; in the ordinary case, if the court should desire to find liability, it would be quite as easy to find the necessary "relation" in the position of the parties toward one another, and hence to extend the defendant's duty to the plaintiff. The statement that there is or is not a duty begs the essential question whether the plaintiff's interests are entitled to legal protection against the defendant's conduct. It is therefore not surprising to find that the problem of duty is as broad as the whole law of negligence, and that no universal test for it ever has been formulated. It is a shorthand...
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