Snyder Elevators, Inc. v. Baker

• Decision Date: 25 October 1988
• Docket Number: No. 22A01-8804-CV-00120,22A01-8804-CV-00120
• Citation: 529 N.E.2d 855
• Parties: SNYDER ELEVATORS, INC., Appellant (Defendant Below), v. Timothy BAKER and Jamie Baker, Appellees (Plaintiffs Below), Easterday Brothers Co., Inc., Appellee (Defendant Below).
• Court: Indiana Appellate Court

Page 855

529 N.E.2d 855

SNYDER ELEVATORS, INC., Appellant (Defendant Below), v. Timothy BAKER and Jamie Baker, Appellees (Plaintiffs Below) Easterday Brothers Co., Inc., Appellee (Defendant Below).

No. 22A01-8804-CV-00120.

Court of Appeals of Indiana,

First District.

Oct. 25, 1988.

Ernest W. Smith, Smith Bartlett & Heeke, Jeffersonville, for appellant.

William C. Moyer, Steven A. Gustafson, Lorch & Naville, New Albany, for appellees.

ROBERTSON, Judge.

Appellant-defendant Snyder Elevators, Inc. (Snyder) appeals the trial court's granting of the appellee-plaintiff's motion to correct error by which the trial court vacated its entry of summary judgment in favor of Snyder.

We reverse.

This personal injury action against Snyder was commenced when Timothy Baker and Jamie Baker (Bakers) were injured when they drove their motorcycle into the front of a car driven by Tonya Buck.

Snyder operates a grain elevator in New Albany, Indiana. Snyder is located several blocks from the intersection at which the accident occurred. The elevator received grain by truck and shipped it out by rail. The independently-owned trucks delivering grain were customers of Snyder. In 1986, the Commodity Credit Corporation designated Snyder a recipient of forfeited grain. As a result, the grain elevator saw increased activity during the harvest months of 1986. During normal harvest, 50-75 trucks daily would unload grain at the elevator. During the 1986 harvest season, 85-95 trucks arrived daily. Snyder's parking lot accommodated only 25 trucks. Consequently, trucks normally lined up along the curbs of neighboring streets waiting to unload grain.

Main Street intersects 14th Street near the grain elevator. In the past, trucks had never gotten backed up farther than 14th Street waiting to unload grain. During the 1986 harvest season, trucks began lining up along Main Street where it intersected 14th. On September 5, 1986, an Easterday Company truck waiting in line to be unloaded at Snyder's was parked at the curb on Main Street near the intersection. Tonya Buck had driven her car north on 14th Street until she got to Main. After stopping at Main, she inched forward because her view of Main Street to the west, or left, was obstructed by the Easterday truck. The Baker motorcycle was traveling east on Main Street when it collided with Buck's car. At the time the motorcycle hit the front bumper of Buck's car, her car was stopped.

Before the accident, the city and neighbors had complained to Snyder about the trucks queueing up on Main Street. The complaints were concerning trucks blocking driveways and doorways along Main. In response, Snyder arranged for the trucks to park in a parking lot of a nearby McDonald's restaurant. In order to implement this, an employee of Snyder delivered to drivers a map detailing the route the drivers were to take to the elevator. However, this arrangement lasted only a week because arriving trucks "jumped" the line ahead of the trucks waiting in the McDonald's lot. The trucks resumed parking on Main Street.

The Bakers brought suit against Easterday Brothers, owner of the truck, and Snyder. In its count against Snyder, Bakers allege Snyder was negligent in failing to: 1) provide adequate parking for its customers; 2) provide an orderly and efficient means of loading and unloading customers; 3) inform its customers that their parking was creating hazards to the public; and 4) failed to implement steps to eliminate those hazards.

Snyder filed a motion for summary judgment, contending that no genuine issue of material fact existed, and that as a matter of law, Snyder owed no duty to Bakers, nor had Snyder assumed any duty toward Bakers. The trial court granted Snyder's motion, but vacated its judgment upon consideration of Bakers' motion to correct error. The two issues presented by this appeal are: 1) whether Snyder owed any duty of care toward Bakers, and 2) whether Snyder gratuitously assumed any duty of care toward Bakers.

When reviewing a ruling on a motion for summary judgment, we must determine whether there is any genuine issue of material fact, and whether the law was correctly applied. The moving party has the burden of establishing that no material facts are in genuine issue. All doubts and inferences are resolved in favor of the non-moving party. Perry v. Northern Indiana Public Service (1982), Ind.App., 433 N.E.2d 44. Whether a duty exists is a question of law for the court. State v. Flanigan (1986), Ind.App., 489 N.E.2d 1216. Absent a duty, there can be no breach of a duty, hence, no negligence or liability based upon a breach of duty. Id.

No Indiana case involves facts giving rise to the precise question of this case. However, duty was not intended to be defined or delineated by the specific factual circumstances of a case:

"... the problems of 'duty' are sufficiently complex without subdividing it ... to cover an endless series of details of conduct. It is better to reserve duty for the problem of the relation between individuals which imposes upon one a legal obligation for the benefit of the other, and to deal with particular conduct in terms of a legal standard of what is required to meet the obligation. In other words, 'duty' is a question of whether the defendant is under any obligation for the benefit of the particular plaintiff."

W. Prosser and W. Keeton, The Law of Torts Sec. 53 at 356 (1984).

The operators of a flea market adjacent to a highway owed no duty to its patrons to protect them from being struck by automobiles as the patrons were walking along a highway to the flea market. State v. Flanigan, supra. The Flanigan court declined to impose liability on the operators of the flea market for the acts of a third party over whom the operators had no control, and which occurred not on their property but on a public highway over which they had no control. In Sports, Inc. v. Gilbert (1982), Ind.App., 431 N.E.2d 534 the court found a business owner owed no duty to a member of the general public to control the acts of a third person. In that case, the plaintiffs were injured on a highway off the premises of the defendant motor speedway at which the intoxicated driver had caused a minor accident. The court recognized that the owner of land has a duty to protect business invitees from the acts of third persons on the premises when the danger to the invitee is foreseeable. Under that rule, only the speedway patrons would have been entitled to protection, and only from hazards from persons and conditions on the premises. Id., 537-538. The court also noted that the right to control another person's actions is essential to the imposition of a duty to control his actions.

In the instant case, the plaintiff is a member of the public-at-large, not having with the defendant any of the common relationships traditionally imposing a duty of reasonable care: landowners to invitees, common carriers to passengers, and innkeepers to guests. Ember v. B.F.D., Inc. (1986), Ind.App., 490 N.E.2d 764. The business owner in Flanigan did not owe a duty even to his patron where the injury occurred off the business premises and was a result of actions of a stranger to defendant over whom defendant had no control. More apposite to the case at bar is Sports, where the speedway was under no obligation for the benefit of the plaintiffs who were members of the public-at-large.

Even cases in which the courts favor expanding liability beyond the boundaries of the business premises do not benefit Bakers. Ember, supra, considered the question whether a business owner's liability is limited only to the area owned or leased, and it concluded that such a limitation may not exist. However, in Ember, the duty grew out of the landowner's relationship with the plaintiff, his business invitee. Ember at 772. ¹ Indeed, the majority's opinion assumes Ember was a business invitee, whose status as such was not diminished...