Santana v. Rainbow Cleaners
| Decision Date | 30 April 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 2007-268-Appeal.,2007-268-Appeal. |
| Parties | Zaida SANTANA et al. v. RAINBOW CLEANERS, Inc. et al. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Mark W. Dana, Esq., for Plaintiffs.
Rajaram Suryanarayan, Esq., Providence, for Defendants.
Present: GOLDBERG, Acting C.J., FLAHERTY, SUTTELL, ROBINSON, JJ., and WILLIAMS, C.J. (ret.).
Did a community mental health center that treated an outpatient who suffered from a mental disability assume a duty to exercise control over the patient to prevent him from committing an act of violence? Based on the record presented to us in this case, we hold that it did not.
The plaintiff, Zaida Santana, individually, and as parent and next friend of her two children,1 filed suit in the Providence County Superior Court against the defendant, The Providence Center, Inc., alleging that because of the defendant's negligence, she was severely beaten by David L. Kelly, a man who had been treated for a number of years as an outpatient at the behavioral-health facility owned and operated by the defendant. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant had a duty to supervise and restrain Kelly, essentially to exercise control over his conduct to prevent the attack. The plaintiff said that the defendant should have initiated certification proceedings pursuant to Rhode Island's Mental Health Law, G.L. 1956 chapter 5 of title 40.1. It is without question that Kelly was a deeply troubled individual; however, a Superior Court justice found that the factors present in this case did not trigger the imposition of a duty upon the defendant, and she granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment. Because our de novo review supports the motion justice's conclusions, we affirm the judgment.
On May 26, 2004, a Providence police officer was dispatched to Rainbow Cleaners, Inc., a dry-cleaning business on Reservoir Avenue in Providence, after a disturbance was reported at the store. Once inside the business, the officer observed an employee, Zaida Santana, unconscious and bleeding profusely, the result of multiple blows to the head from a crowbar wielded by David L. Kelly. Apparently, Kelly's rampage on that day began when he struck a neighbor with a wooden plank. He then walked the short distance to Rainbow Cleaners. Santana said that she was working in the back area of the store when she heard a commotion coming from the front. She investigated the cause of the disturbance and witnessed Kelly attacking her coworker. Santana pleaded with Kelly to stop, but she has no recollection of what happened next. Her coworker later informed her that Kelly had struck her in the head with a crowbar. As a result of the attack, Santana suffered severe head and brain injuries and was admitted to the intensive care unit at Rhode Island Hospital, where she remained unconscious for two weeks. Kelly was arrested and charged with three counts of felony assault.
Kelly was not a stranger to Rainbow Cleaners. He lived in an adjacent apartment and occasionally shoveled snow in front of the business and did other odd jobs around the store. Santana said that Kelly had never threatened her but that she and the other employees were well aware of his mental-health issues. They referred to him as "el loquito," which Santana understood to mean "a little crazy" in Spanish, because of his erratic behavior. Santana said that on one occasion Kelly began screaming that he was James Bond, and another time she observed him breaking glass behind the store. Also, she said that about ten days before the attack, a visibly upset Kelly entered the store and pounded his fist on the counter as he screamed, Santana said that she was afraid of Kelly, but that one of the store's owners told her that he was harmless.
In the years leading up to the attack, Kelly had received outpatient treatment at The Providence Center, a private, nonprofit, community mental health center that assists individuals affected by mental illness by providing treatment within a community setting.2 It appears that the last contact Kelly had with the facility was in January 2004, some four months before he attacked Santana.3 Following Kelly's arrest for that assault, The Providence Center concluded that outpatient treatment no longer was a viable treatment option, and it initiated certification proceedings under the state's Mental Health Law. Although he was charged with three counts of felony assault, Kelly was later admitted to the Eleanor Slater Hospital, where he was deemed incompetent to stand trial.4
On October 13, 2005, Santana filed suit against Rainbow Cleaners, The Providence Center, and "John Does I-X," the healthcare professionals who treated Kelly. The plaintiff later amended her complaint to include the owners of Rainbow Cleaners as defendants. The Providence Center is the only party that remains part of this appeal.5 In her claim for negligent supervision against defendant, Santana alleged that:
"Prior to May 26, 2004, the Defendant, Providence Center, owed a duty to those who might come into contact with David L. Kelly to ensure that David L. Kelly was supervised and/or restrained and/or monitored and/or medicated properly because it knew or should have known that David L. Kelly was an individual whose continued unsupervised presence in the community would create an imminent likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental disability, and was capable of committing acts of violence upon others, pursuant to R.I.G.L. § 40.1-5-7[.]"
Santana contended that she was injured as a direct and proximate result of defendant's breach of this duty.6 Although not explicitly framed as such, it reasonably may be inferred that plaintiff's claim encompasses an allegation of a breach of a duty to exercise control over Kelly by initiating emergency certification proceedings under § 40.1-5-7.
On March 30, 2007, The Providence Center filed a motion for summary judgment, maintaining that it had no legal duty either to seek to commit Kelly for hospitalization or to warn Santana of his dangerous propensities. It also argued that Santana failed to point to any evidence that would support her allegation: (1) that it negligently supervised Kelly by failing to hospitalize him; or (2) that it knew or should have known of the risk Kelly posed. Significantly, Santana did not offer the Superior Court any facts evidencing that Kelly would have met the stringent requirements for an individual to be committed under the provisions of the Mental Health Law. Nonetheless, plaintiff urged that the factors in this case supported a legal duty flowing from defendant to her.
The plaintiff's counsel argued to the motion justice that The Providence Center negligently supervised Kelly because it failed to initiate an emergency certification pursuant to § 40.1-5-7. He said that defendant could have filed such an application after the District Court ordered Kelly into counseling at the facility. The motion justice found that there were insufficient duty-triggering factors in this case, and she granted defendant's motion for summary judgment.7
On appeal, plaintiff argues that the motion justice erred and that defendant owed her a duty because: (1) a special relationship existed between defendant and Kelly, (2) the scope of the burden imposed on defendant as a result of this duty is reasonable and consistent with valid public policy concerns, and (3) the attack on Santana was foreseeable.8 The Providence Center reiterates to this Court essentially the same arguments it posited to the Superior Court. It contends that it did not owe a legal duty to Santana, and that even if this Court were to hold that such a duty existed in Rhode Island, plaintiff failed to present any evidence that would trigger it. Therefore, defendant asks this Court to affirm the judgment entered in its favor by the Superior Court.
"This Court reviews the granting of summary judgment de novo and applies the same standards as the motion justice." Carrozza v. Voccola, 962 A.2d 73, 76 (R.I. 2009) (quoting McAdam v. Grzelczyk, 911 A.2d 255, 259 (R.I.2006)). Summary judgment is appropriate when, after viewing the admissible evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, "no genuine issue of material fact is evident from `the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any' and the motion justice finds that the moving party is entitled to prevail as a matter of law." Smiler v. Napolitano, 911 A.2d 1035, 1038 (R.I.2006) (quoting Super. R. Civ. P. 56(c)). "Therefore, summary judgment should enter `against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case * * *.'" Lavoie v. North East Knitting, Inc., 918 A.2d 225, 228 (R.I. 2007) (). "[C]omplete failure of proof concerning an essential element of the nonmoving party's case necessarily renders all other facts immaterial." Id. (quoting Celotex, 477 U.S. at 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548).
In a case of first impression, plaintiff asks this Court to impose a duty on a community mental health center to exercise control over the conduct of an outpatient by initiating certification proceedings. Although we are sympathetic to this innocent and grievously injured plaintiff, we do not believe that under the facts of this case, defendant owed such a duty to her.
To properly set forth "a claim for negligence, `a plaintiff must establish a legally cognizable duty owed by a defendant to a plaintiff, a breach of that duty, proximate causation between the conduct and the resulting injury, and the actual loss or damage.'" Willis v. Omar, 954 A.2d 126, 129 ...
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...alone does not create a duty; instead, it is one of a number of factors that must be considered." Santana v. Rainbow Cleaners, Inc. , ––– R.I. ––––, 969 A.2d 653, 666 (2009), citing Ferreira v. Strack , ––– R.I. ––––, 636 A.2d 682, 688, fn. 4 (1994) ; Estates of Morgan at 293, 673 N.E.2d 13......