Scott v. Garfield

• Decision Date: 15 September 2009
• Docket Number: SJC-10362
• Citation: 912 N.E.2d 1000,454 Mass. 790
• Parties: Charles M. SCOTT & another<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL> v. Stuart T. GARFIELD & another.<SMALL><SUP>2</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

912 N.E.2d 1000

454 Mass. 790

Charles M. SCOTT & another¹ v. Stuart T. GARFIELD & another.²

SJC-10362

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

Argued April 9, 2009.

Decided September 15, 2009.

Paul J. Gillespie, Lynnfield (Kristen L. Morgan with him) for the defendants.

Thomas H. Hayman, Boston (Francis R. Powell with him) for the plaintiffs.

Present: MARSHALL, C.J., IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, CORDY, BOTSFORD, & GANTS, JJ.

IRELAND, J.

We transferred this case from the Appeals Court to consider whether a lawful visitor may recover damages for personal injuries caused by a breach of the implied warranty of habitability. Charles M. Scott (Scott) suffered injuries while visiting an apartment leased by his friend from the defendants, Stuart and Ellen Garfield, when a railing on a second-floor porch gave way and he fell to the ground. Judgment entered for Scott on his claim of breach of the implied warranty of habitability, and the defendants appealed. Because we conclude that a lawful visitor may recover damages for personal injuries caused by a breach of the implied warranty of habitability, that the judge neither erred in finding that the loss of evidence by the defendants constituted spoliation nor abused his discretion in imposing sanctions therefor, and that the judge did not abuse his discretion in excluding from evidence the amounts of money paid by Scott's health insurer toward his medical bills, we affirm the judgment.

1. Background. We present the essential background and facts, reserving some details for our discussion of the issues raised.

In 1992, the defendants bought a three-story house in Lynn. The defendants resided on the first floor. In 1993, they let the second-floor apartment, which included a porch,³ to the plaintiffs' friend, Sherry Baker.⁴ Before the defendants leased the second-floor apartment to Baker, the department of public health of Lynn inspected it and issued a certificate of occupancy. The defendant Stuart Garfield was present on the second-floor porch on several occasions after 1993. He was a social guest of Baker at times, and he also had access to the porch annually in order to clean the gutters. In 1996, after being informed that a section of railing on one side of the porch was loose, Garfield repaired it. He made no repairs to the section of railing at the other side of the porch. In 2000, Garfield told Baker that he planned to repair the porches on the house, including the second-floor front porch. No repairs were made, however, before the date when Scott was injured. In 2002, Baker gave notice that she intended to terminate her lease and move out.

On July 20, 2002, the plaintiffs planned to help Baker pack for her upcoming move. Earlier in the day, Scott had consumed a glass of wine with lunch at his home. He and his wife then went to Baker's apartment, where several other people were helping. Scott drank a beer while socializing with some of the other guests, and opened another beer when he began to help pack. He took a rug onto the porch to shake it out, and leaned over the section of railing on the other side of the porch from where Garfield had made a repair in 1996. As he stood up, the railing gave way and Scott fell to the ground, seriously injuring his shoulder.

An attorney who represented Scott made a telephone call to Garfield eleven days after the accident and sought to have him preserve the railing. Garfield did so. The attorney did not, however, ask Garfield to preserve the columns on the porch to which the railing had been attached. During the following month Garfield had a contractor, who had been performing work elsewhere at the house, perform repair work on the second-floor porch. The contractor removed the two columns to which the railing had been attached and discarded them.

The plaintiffs commenced an action in the Superior Court, asserting claims for negligence and breach of the implied warranty of habitability, as well as a separate claim by Pamela Scott for loss of consortium.⁵ The defendants raised as a defense that, due to his alcohol consumption, Scott had been comparatively negligent. The case was tried to a jury.

The jury returned special verdicts in favor of Scott, on his claims of negligence and breach of the implied warranty of habitability, in favor of Pamela Scott, on her claim for loss of consortium, and in favor of the Garfields on their comparative negligence defense, finding that Scott had been twenty per cent comparatively negligent. Mass. R. Civ. P. 49(a), 365 Mass. 812 (1974). Because judgment entered for Scott on his claim of breach of the implied warranty of habitability (rather than his claim for negligence), he recovered $450,000, the full amount of damages found by the jury with no reduction for the jury's finding of comparative negligence. Pamela Scott recovered damages in the amount of $4,000 on her loss of consortium claim. The defendants appealed, and we transferred the case to this court on our own motion.

2. Discussion. a. Implied warranty of habitability. The defendants moved for a directed verdict, Mass. R. Civ. P. 50(a), 365 Mass. 814 (1974), and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or in the alternative for a new trial, Mass. R. Civ. P. 50(b), as amended, 428 Mass. 1402 (1998), on the breach of implied warranty of habitability claim, on the ground that Scott was a guest rather than a tenant and therefore could not recover under the implied warranty of habitability. The judge denied the motions.⁶ The defendants contend that the judge erred in denying their motions because our case law has not recognized the right of a guest of a tenant to recover under the warranty. For the reasons that we now set forth, we conclude that a lawful visitor may recover for personal injuries caused by a breach of the implied warranty of habitability.

The implied warranty of habitability, as it has developed in our decisions, is a multi-faceted legal concept that encompasses contract and tort principles, as well as the State building and sanitary codes. Although the warranty itself arises from the residential leasing contract between landlord and tenant, we have imposed a legal duty on the landlord, in the form of an implied agreement, to ensure that the dwelling complies with the State building and sanitary codes throughout the term of the lease. See Crowell v. McCaffrey, 377 Mass. 443, 451, 386 N.E.2d 1256 (1979). See also Doe v. New Bedford Hous. Auth., 417 Mass. 273, 281, 630 N.E.2d 248 (1994) (minimum standards of warranty of habitability measured by applicable State building and sanitary codes); Boston Hous. Auth. v. Hemingway, 363 Mass. 184, 199, 293 N.E.2d 831 (1973) ("This warranty [insofar as it is based on the State Sanitary Code and local health regulations] cannot be waived by any provision in the lease or rental agreement"). To the extent that a residential lease is a contract between landlord and tenant, there is no question that only a tenant (and not a guest) can recover for economic loss caused by a breach of the implied warranty of habitability. See, e.g., Cruz Mgt. Co. v. Thomas, 417 Mass. 782, 787, 633 N.E.2d 390 (1994).

The warranty also sounds in tort, and we have recognized that a tenant may recover damages for personal injuries caused by a breach. See Crowell v. McCaffrey, supra (implied warranty of habitability "carries with it liability for personal injuries caused by a breach"). Cf. Correia v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 388 Mass. 342, 353, 446 N.E.2d 1033 (1983) (recognizing product liability claims for personal injuries based on breach of warranty sound essentially in tort).

Our conclusion that lawful visitors, like tenants, may recover for personal injuries caused by breach of the implied warranty of habitability rests, in part, on the expectation that a tenant might invite a guest into his home, and the concomitant expectation that the tenant's home must be safe for a guest to visit—which together go to the very heart of the landlord's contractual obligation to deliver and maintain habitable premises that comply with the building and sanitary codes. Our conclusion is consistent with the State sanitary code itself, which provides that the purposes of the minimum standards of fitness for human habitation are to "protect the health, safety and well-being of the occupants of housing and of the general public" (emphasis added). 105 Code Mass. Regs. § 410.001 (1997). A lawful visitor of an "occupant of housing" plainly comes within the scope of persons intended to be protected and therefore also within the ambit of the implied warranty of habitability while on the rented premises.

Moreover, we have long since eliminated much of the legal significance attached to the question of status in our tort law. See Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693, 297 N.E.2d 43 (1973) (doing away with distinctions between categories of licensee and invitee and holding that landowner owes duty of reasonable care to all lawful visitors). A tenant's guest may recover damages from a landlord for personal injuries caused by negligent maintenance of the premises rented to the tenant. See Young v. Garwacki, 380 Mass. 162, 168, 402 N.E.2d 1045 (1980). Logic, therefore, compels our conclusion that a lawful visitor may also recover for personal injuries caused by a breach of the warranty of habitability. To decide otherwise would create or maintain a type of distinction based on status that we long ago rejected. It would not stand to reason that where a tenant and a lawful visitor both suffered injuries on the tenant's rented premises, caused by the same significant defect in violation of the sanitary code, the tenant might recover on a breach of warranty claim, while the tenant's guest could recover only in negligence, thus subjecting only the guest to a comparative negligence defense. See Correia v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., supra (comparative negligence statute, G.L. c. 231, § 85, not applicable to breach of...