Ruiz v. Victory Props., LLC.

• Citation: 107 A.3d 381,315 Conn. 320
• Decision Date: 20 January 2015
• Docket Number: No. 18997.,18997.
• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut
• Parties: Adriana RUIZ et al. v. VICTORY PROPERTIES, LLC.

315 Conn. 320

107 A.3d 381

Adriana RUIZ et al.

v.VICTORY PROPERTIES, LLC.

No. 18997.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Dec. 4, 2013.

Decided Jan. 20, 2015.

Louis B. Blumenfeld, with whom was Lorinda S. Coon, Hartford, for the appellant (defendant Victory Properties, LLC).

Michael T. Petela, New Haven, with whom, on the brief, was Angelo Cicchiello, Hartford, for the appellees (plaintiffs).

ROGERS, C.J., and PALMER, ZARELLA, McDONALD and ESPINOSA, Js.

Opinion

PALMER, J.

The plaintiff Olga Rivera (Olga) commenced this negligence action, both in her individual capacity and as next friend and parent of the named plaintiff, Adriana Ruiz (Adriana),¹ against their landlord, the defendant, Victory Properties, LLC,² alleging that the defendant was liable for injuries that then seven year old Adriana sustained when her ten year old neighbor, with whom Adriana had been playing in their shared backyard, removed a piece of concrete from that backyard, carried it up to his family's third floor apartment and dropped it onto Adriana's head from a window or the balcony of that apartment. The trial court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the defendant did not owe Adriana a duty of care because no reasonable juror could find that her injuries were a foreseeable consequence of the defendant's alleged negligence and because imposing liability on the defendant would be contrary to overriding public policy considerations. The plaintiffs appealed to the Appellate Court from the trial court's judgment in favor of the defendant. In a divided opinion, the Appellate Court reversed the trial court's judgment and remanded the case with direction to deny the defendant's summary judgment motion. Ruiz v. Victory Properties, LLC, 135 Conn.App. 119, 133, 43 A.3d 186 (2012). We then granted the defendant's petition for certification to appeal, limited to the issue of whether the Appellate Court properly reversed the trial court's decision to grant the defendant's motion for summary judgment. Ruiz v. Victory Properties, LLC, 305 Conn. 922, 47 A.3d 882 (2012). Because we agree with the Appellate Court that the trial court improperly granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, we affirm the Appellate Court's judgment.

The record reveals the following facts, most of which are undisputed.³ At all times relevant to this appeal, the defendant owned and managed a six-family apartment building located at 138 North Street in the city of New Britain. Each of the apartments has an open deck overlooking the backyard, which includes a fenced in area that is accessible by a gate. Children who lived in the apartment, along with other visiting children, regularly used that area as a playground, even though it was in very poor condition. In particular, it contained discarded home furnishings and appliances, and an abandoned motor vehicle in a state of complete disrepair. In addition, as a result of the deteriorating concrete sidewalks and retaining walls, chunks of concrete were lying about, along with piles of construction material, trash and rocks. Parents of the children playing in this area were concerned because the children would play with the debris, including the broken concrete. The defendant's owner, who also served as the apartment manager, was aware of the condition of this area because a tenant had complained to him about it, and he personally observed the area when he visited the property each month to collect rent money. Nevertheless, the defendant made no effort to remove or cordon off the debris so that children playing in the area would not have access to it.

On May 14, 2008, Saribel Cruz resided in a third floor apartment in the building with her ten year old son, Luis Cruz (Luis). Olga and Adriana, who is Saribel Cruz' niece, resided in another apartment in the building. On that day, Luis and Adriana, along with as many as a dozen other children, all of whom were being watched by several adults, were playing in the backyard. Luis decided that he wanted to see if he could break a piece of concrete. To that end, at about 4 p.m., Luis picked up a piece of concrete from the backyard that weighed approximately eighteen pounds, carried it up to his family's third floor apartment, and dropped it from the window or balcony of that apartment to the ground below. Luis saw his cousin Adriana below and yelled, urging her to get out of the way, but the rock struck her on the head, causing very serious injuries, including a crushed skull, traumatic brain injury

and paralysis on her right side. As a result of these injuries, Adriana had two surgeries and had been hospitalized for nearly two months.

The plaintiffs subsequently commenced this action against the defendant, alleging that the defendant was negligent in failing to remove the loose concrete and other debris from the backyard of the apartment building, and that this negligence was a cause of Adriana's injuries because it was a substantial factor in producing those injuries.⁴ The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, claiming that, under the circumstances, it did not owe Adriana a duty of care and cannot as a matter of law be held responsible for her injuries. The trial court granted the defendant's motion, concluding that the defendant did not owe Adriana a duty of care because a reasonable landlord in the defendant's position, knowing that there were pieces of broken concrete and other debris in the backyard of the apartment building, would not have foreseen that a child would injure another child by “lugging a [piece of concrete] up to the balcony of the building and pitching [it] off, onto the head of [the other] child....” The trial court further concluded that permitting a jury to find liability under the facts of this case “would likely discourage landlords from renting apartments to families with young children. It would surely drive up the economic costs associated with maintaining and insuring rental properties, without a concomitant benefit of safeguarding against conditions and hazards that are much more prevalent than the one here.... [Although] imposing liability on the defendant would surely be a benefit to [Adriana] and her family, the overall economic and societal costs militate against such an imposition in like situations.”

The plaintiffs appealed to the Appellate Court from the judgment of the trial court. The Appellate Court reversed the trial court's judgment, concluding that the trial court, in evaluating whether Adriana's injuries were foreseeable, failed to consider whether the harm that she suffered was within the general scope of the risk created by the defendant's failure to remove potentially dangerous debris from the backyard and, instead, improperly focused on the specific manner in which the injuries occurred. See Ruiz v. Victory Properties, LLC, supra, 135 Conn.App. at 126–27, 43 A.3d 186. In other words, the Appellate Court determined that the trial court had framed the nature of the risk in too narrow of terms. See id. In its view, the risk of harm created by the defendant's conduct was not, as the trial court had concluded, a child carrying a piece of concrete to a third floor apartment and dropping it to the backyard below but, rather, that of a child “getting hurt by a large [piece of concrete] thrown by another child,” conduct that, according to the Appellate Court, a fact finder reasonably could find to be foreseeable. Id., at 127, 43 A.3d 186. The Appellate Court further concluded that imposing a duty of care on the defendant was in accord with this state's long-standing public policy requiring a landlord to maintain the common areas of a rental property in a reasonably safe condition, particularly when, as in the present case, the landlord is aware that children regularly play in those areas. See id., at 129–30, 43 A.3d 186.

Judge Alvord dissented from the majority opinion of the Appellate Court. She agreed with the trial court that the foreseeability inquiry should be characterized more narrowly, that is, “as whether the defendant would reasonably foresee that a ten year old child would pick up an eighteen pound cinder block, carry it up several flights of stairs to the third floor of the apartment building and drop it on the head of [a] seven year old....” (Emphasis omitted.) Id., at 137–38, 43 A.3d 186 (Alvord, J., dissenting). Believing that such a series of events was not reasonably foreseeable, and that imposing a duty of care on the defendant would lead to increased litigation and drive up the costs of property ownership, Judge Alvord concluded that the defendant owed Adriana no duty of care. Id., at 138 and n. 7, 43 A.3d 186 (Alvord, J., dissenting).

On appeal to this court following our granting of certification, the defendant contends that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that the defendant owed Adriana a duty of care and improperly rejected its claim that, even if the defendant did owe her such a duty, the defendant's conduct was not a proximate cause of her injuries. We disagree with both contentions and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court.

Our analysis of the defendant's claim is governed by the following principles. A cause of action in negligence is comprised of four elements: duty; breach of that duty; causation; and actual injury. E.g., Mirjavadi v. Vakilzadeh, 310 Conn. 176, 191, 74 A.3d 1278 (2013). Whether a duty exists is a question of law for the court, and only if the court finds that such a duty exists does the trier of fact consider whether that duty was breached. See, e.g., id. “Duty is a legal conclusion about relationships between individuals, made after the fact, and imperative to a negligence cause of action. The nature of the duty, and the specific persons to whom it is owed, are determined by the circumstances surrounding the conduct of the individual.... Although it has been said that no universal test for [duty] ever has been formulated ... our...