Smith v. Grove Apartments, LLC

• Decision Date: 22 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 3D06-688.,3D06-688.
• Citation: 976 So.2d 582
• Parties: Franklin L. SMITH, Appellant, v. GROVE APARTMENTS, LLC, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

976 So.2d 582

Franklin L. SMITH, Appellant, v. GROVE APARTMENTS, LLC, Appellee.

No. 3D06-688.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.

August 22, 2007.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied February 15, 2008.

Chasin & Stinson and Keith Chasin, Miami, for appellant.

Law Offices of Roland Gomez and Ronnie Guillen, Miami, for appellee.

Before GREEN, RAMIREZ, and SUAREZ, JJ.

GREEN, J.

Franklin L. Smith, tenant, appeals an adverse final summary judgment entered in his personal injury action against his landlord, Grove Apartments, LLC. ("landlord"). Smith allegedly sustained his injuries when he resorted to self-help to correct a defective condition of the parking lot after the landlord refused to do so. The trial court entered summary judgment in favor of the landlord based upon its conclusion that Smith's injuries were not foreseeable as a matter of law. Because foreseeability in this context is an issue for the trier of fact, and there are other genuine issues of material fact, the entry of summary judgment was error and must be reversed.

The pleadings, record evidence, and reasonable inferences therefrom, which must be construed in the light most favorable to Smith as the non-moving party,¹ reveal that this is a relatively simple negligence case. Smith resided as a tenant in an apartment complex owned by the landlord. He sustained personal injuries on July 28, 2002, when he fell from his step ladder. At the time, he was attempting to clear and trim back overgrown foliage above the parking lot of the leased premises. The landlord had permitted the tree branches and vines over the parking lot to grow to the point where they were scratching vehicles, causing power outages, and hitting motorists in the eyes as they attempted to enter and exit their vehicles.

Prior to his use of self-help to trim back this overgrown foliage, Smith had repeatedly complained to the landlord about this problem in the parking lot. However, the landlord refused and/or failed to take any corrective action.² Prior to Smith's accident, Florida Power and Light came out to cut back those trees surrounding its power lines that were causing the power outages. Florida Power and Light, however, declined Smith's request to trim back the remaining overgrown trees because they didn't impact the company's power lines.³

Thus, after the landlord and Florida Power and Light both declined to trim back the remaining overgrown tree branches and vines in the parking lot, Smith decided to exercise self-help to alleviate this problem for himself and other tenants and invitees. In fact, according to Smith's testimony, the landlord's maintenance supervisor actually suggested that Smith cut the trees for himself.⁴

On the day of the accident, Smith placed his 12 foot aluminum single ladder against a holly tree that he described as "almost all limbs."⁵ He had with him a machete and chain saw that he utilized to remove tree branches. He fell from the ladder as he was reaching to pull a dead limb from the holly tree.⁶ As a result of his fall, he sustained serious bodily injuries.

Smith filed the instant negligence action against the landlord. The complaint alleged, among other things, that the landlord owed Smith and the other tenants a duty to use reasonable care for the maintenance of the parking lot. It was further alleged that the landlord breached his duty by failing to trim back these overgrown trees in the parking lot after being put on notice of the same. As a result of the landlord's breach of its duty to maintain this common area, Smith alleged that he resorted to "self-help" to make the parking lot useable for himself and other tenants and invitees on the leased premises and was injured as a result.⁷

The landlord filed its motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the alleged improper maintenance was not the direct or legal cause of the tenant's injuries as a matter of law. Rather, the landlord essentially argued that Smith's own voluntary act of climbing onto his ladder to trim back the trees was an intervening or superseding cause of his injuries. In response to this motion, Smith argued that the landlord had both a statutory and common law duty to maintain its parking lot properly as one of the common areas of the leased premises; the landlord breached this duty by not trimming back the overgrown trees and vines. He further argued that the landlord would be liable for his injuries if the jury found that his injuries were a foreseeable result of the landlord's breach of its duty. See Bean v. Carey's Rental Agency, Inc., 532 So.2d 685 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988); Bennett M. Lifter, Inc. v. Varnado, 480 So.2d 1336 (Fla. 3d DCA 1985).

The trial court granted the landlord's motion and entered final summary judgment in the landlord's favor. Although the trial court found that the landlord had a duty to his tenant to trim the trees and breached this duty when it failed to do so, the trial court nevertheless found as a matter of law, that the tenant's injuries were not a foreseeable result since the tenant voluntarily performed the maintenance services using his own ladder and equipment.

On appeal the tenant argues that the trial court erred in entering summary judgment where the issue of foreseeability in this case was one for the trier of fact. We agree and reverse.

We initially acknowledge that our standard of review of this final summary judgment is de novo. Major League Baseball v. Morsani, 790 So.2d 1071, 1074 (Fla. 2001) ("The standard of review governing a trial court's ruling on a motion for summary judgment posing a pure question of law is de novo."). Further, we note that a summary judgment should be granted with caution in negligence and malpractice actions. See Moore v. Morris, 475 So.2d 666, 668 (Fla.1985); Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Tracz, 799 So.2d 413, 414 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001); Lindsey v. Bill Arflin Bonding Agency, Inc., 645 So.2d 565, 566-67 (Fla. 1st DCA 1994). As the Supreme Court has stated:

Summary judgments should be cautiously granted in negligence and malpractice suits. The law is well settled in Florida that a party moving for summary judgment must show conclusively the absence of any genuine issue of material fact and the court must draw every possible inference in favor of the party against whom a summary judgment is sought. A summary judgment should not be granted unless the facts are so crystallized that nothing remains but questions of law.

If the evidence raises any issue of material fact, if it is conflicting, if it will permit different reasonable inferences, or if it tends to prove the issues, it should be submitted to the jury as a question of fact to be determined by it.

Moore, 475 So.2d at 668 (citations omitted).

The movant for summary judgment in a negligence action must demonstrate as a matter of law either that there is no negligence or that the sole proximate cause of the injury was the plaintiff's negligence. See Bryant v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 577 So.2d 1347, 1349 (Fla. 2d DCA 1990). "To establish that there was no negligence the movant must demonstrate that there is no duty owed to the plaintiff or that it did not breach a duty which is owed." Id. (citing Cutler v. St. John's United Methodist Church of Edwardsville, Ill., 489 So.2d 123 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986)).

In the context of a landlord/tenant relationship, the law is well settled that after a tenant takes possession of a residential dwelling unit a landlord has a continuing statutory duty to maintain common areas in a safe condition and to repair dangerous, defective conditions upon notice of their existence, unless otherwise agreed to by the tenant.⁸ See § 83.51(2)(a)3., Fla. Stat. (2007);⁹ Mansur v. Eubanks, 401 So.2d 1328, 1330 (Fla.1981) (the owner has a duty "to transfer a reasonably safe dwelling unit to the tenant [and] ... to exercise reasonable care to repair dangerous, defective conditions upon notice of their existence by the tenant," unless the tenant waived such defects). The policy reason for imposing this duty on the landlord was explained by the Supreme Court in its seminal Mansur decision.

We do not believe there are sufficient reasons to continue to completely insulate the landlord from liability. We live in an age when the complexities of housing construction place the landlord in a much better position than the tenant to guard against dangerous conditions.

Mansur, 401 So.2d at 1330.

The parking lot area in the instant case is most assuredly a common area of the leased premises. As stated earlier, the lease agreement did not impose a duty upon the tenants to maintain the parking lot area. Therefore, the landlord retained its statutory duty to maintain the parking lot area in a clean and safe condition.

The landlord's liability in this personal injury action appears to be primarily grounded upon its statutory violation of section 83.51(2)(a)3, in failing to properly maintain the parking lot.¹⁰ Accordingly, the threshold question is whether Smith comes within the class of persons this statute was intended to protect. See Bennett M. Lifter, Inc., 480 So. 2d at 1338. That is generally a question of fact for the trier of fact. Id. However, in this case, it cannot be disputed that Smith as a tenant, was within the protected class. The trial court's implicit legal determination then, that he was within the protected class, was therefore correct. Id.¹¹

The remaining issues in this case are whether the landlord breached this statute by failing to trim back the trees; whether the injuries suffered by Smith are the type that this statute was intended to prevent; and whether the landlord's violation of the statute was the proximate cause of Smith's injuries. Bennett M. Lifter, Inc., Under well-established Florida law, these are all issues to be resolved by the trier of facts and the trial court reversibly erred when it entered final summary judgment in favor of the landlord in this case. See Cold Storage Café, Inc. v....