Young v. Atlantic Richfield Co.

• Decision Date: 02 September 1987
• Citation: 400 Mass. 837,512 N.E.2d 272
• Parties: Marshall YOUNG, administrator, 1 & et al. 2 v. ATLANTIC RICHFIELD COMPANY.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 272

512 N.E.2d 272

400 Mass. 837

Marshall YOUNG, administrator, ¹ & et al.² v. ATLANTIC RICHFIELD COMPANY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Norfolk.

Argued May 7, 1987.

Decided Sept. 2, 1987.

Thomas D. Burns (Christopher A. Duggan, Boston, with him), for defendant.

Leonard Glazer (David I. Levine, Boston and Frank E. Glazer, Milton, with him), for plaintiffs.

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and WILKINS, ABRAMS, NOLAN and LYNCH, JJ.

NOLAN, Justice.

This case arises out of an automobile accident, which occurred on June 22, 1977, at a gasoline service station owned by the Atlantic Richfield Company (Arco). Lloyd Young, a fifteen-year-old boy, was killed after pumping gasoline into the fuel tank of an automobile driven into the station by his mother, Carole Young. Lloyd Young's administrator brought a wrongful death action against Arco and its lessee, John Santilli, alleging, inter alia, that both parties were negligent. Carole Young, who was present at the time of the accident, also sought recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress. The jury returned special verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs. Arco appealed and argues that the trial judge should have allowed its motion for directed verdicts, motion to dismiss or its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdicts. ³ We transferred the case on our own motion. We now reverse and order judgment to be entered for Arco.

1. The accident. Arco built and leased to Santilli an Arco service station containing a building and two service islands. Each island contained gasoline pumps and an air pump. One gasoline pump on one of the islands had a sign on its top which read "mini serve." Carole Young thought "mini serve" meant "self-service." She drove into the station on the day of the accident and saw two cars at one of the islands. She testified that she said, "These pumps are busy, but the other side is self-service." She also testified that her son Lloyd responded: "Well, go to the self-service one. I'll pump the gas." Carole Young drove her car to the pump with the mini-serve sign, and Lloyd got out to pump the gasoline. Santilli approached the boy and said, "I'll take care of it" or "I'll be with you in a minute," and then returned to service the cars at the other island. Lloyd pumped $5.00 worth of gasoline, and then returned to the rear of the car to replace the cap on the gasoline tank.

Before the Youngs had entered the station, Joseph Kovack, a seventy-seven-year-old man, drove his car into the station and parked it next to the station building. He asked Santilli to check his tire for air and Santilli told him to pull over to the air pump at the island and he would be with him momentarily. Kovack backed up at a speed of between 12 and 15 miles per hour and crashed into Young's automobile, crushing Lloyd. Carole Young got out of her car and watched him die. As a result of this tragedy, Carole Young experienced "intrusive recollections and visualizations of her son's death" up until the time of trial, and an expert testified that this condition, post-traumatic stress syndrome, would likely continue for the rest of her life. ⁴

2. The plaintiffs' case. On appeal, Arco argues that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict that it was negligent. The plaintiffs counter that Arco was negligent in developing the mini-service program, and in locating the air pump next to the gasoline pumps. This negligence, they claim, created an unsafe condition on the premises which caused the death of Lloyd Young and the subsequent injuries to Carole Young. We review the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. Poirier v. Plymouth, 374 Mass. 206, 212, 372 N.E.2d 212 (1978).

Arco developed the mini-serve program in the early 1970's as an incentive to lessee-dealers to increase gasoline sales. Under the program, the dealer would pump gasoline but would provide no additional service, such as checking oil, checking air, or washing windshields. Gasoline at a mini-serve pump was typically 2 to 3 cents cheaper than at a full-service pump. Mini-serve was to be used only in areas where self-serve was illegal. An Arco representative admitted that, at the time of the accident, it was illegal for a gasoline station in Massachusetts to have both self-service and full-service islands. In 1977, self-service stations were permitted only where the entire station was used for self-service. Internal documents of Arco introduced in evidence indicated that Santilli's station was precisely the type of station at which Arco's mini-serve program was aimed.

Santilli testified that his customers were confused by the mini-serve sign. Arco representatives testified that they had no formal way of communicating the meaning of the mini-serve program to customers. Arco relied on sales representatives to explain the program to the dealers, who in turn were to explain it to the customers. According to testimony of an Arco representative, the mini-serve sign was only intended to identify the mini-serve pump once customers were familiar with the program. Nevertheless, Arco eventually developed a new sign which read "Mini Serve Island--attendant will pump gas--Use Full Serve Island for complete service." The new signs were available to dealers for $28.00 by 1976, but Santilli testified that he never saw one. Arco provided Santilli with a roof sign which said "Mini serve--check our gas prices," an entrance sign which said, "Low Gas Price," and a mini-serve pump sticker which said, "Look Low Price."

An Arco representative testified that the location of an air pump at the gasoline island would create more traffic that could bump into people pumping gasoline. After the accident, Santilli told an Arco representative that he wanted the air pump moved because he felt the location of the air pump "may have contributed to the incident." According to Santilli, he moved the air pump from the island to the side of the station building after he experienced problems with the air line freezing during the winter of 1978.

At self-service stations owned by Arco, the company had a policy of equipping the stations with pump operation precaution signs. One of the precautions Arco recommended for the safe dispensing of gasoline was that the person dispensing gasoline is "to be aware of other vehicles in the area." Santilli testified that the risk of being hit by a car while pumping gasoline was not obvious to him before he learned "the gas station business." An Arco representative testified that Arco did not require the pump precaution sign to be placed at mini-serve stations because members of the public were not supposed to pump gasoline at mini-serve pumps.

3. Analysis. In reviewing whether the evidence was sufficient to establish negligence on the part of Arco, we adopt the view of the evidence most favorable to the plaintiffs. Poirier v. Plymouth, 374 Mass. 206, 212, 372 N.E.2d 212 (1978). The test is whether "anywhere in the evidence, from whatever source derived, any combination of circumstances could be found from which a reasonable inference could be drawn in favor of the plaintiff." Id., quoting Raunela v. Hertz Corp., 361 Mass. 341, 343, 280 N.E.2d 179 (1972). Only when no rational view of the evidence warrants a finding that the defendant was negligent may the issue be taken from the jury. Mullins v. Pine Manor College, 389 Mass. 47, 56, 449 N.E.2d 331 (1983). In applying this test, we are unable to discern any view of the evidence which would support the verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs. Although we have said that judicial intrusion into jury decision-making in negligence cases is exceedingly rare, MacDonald v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., 394 Mass. 131, 140, 475 N.E.2d 65 cert. denied, 474 U.S. 920, 106 S.Ct. 250, 88 L.Ed.2d 258 (1985), these verdicts cannot stand.

Arco had a duty to maintain its "property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden of avoiding the risk." Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693, 708, 297 N.E.2d 43 (1973). This duty includes the duty to act with reasonable care to prevent harm caused by a third person. Mullins, supra, 389 Mass. at 54, 449 N.E.2d 331. Indeed, in its brief Arco admits that it owed the plaintiffs a duty to keep the station in reasonably safe condition or to warn them against dangers that might arise from the use of the property that they were not likely to recognize.

The determinative question in this case is whether Arco's duty to use reasonable care to keep the station reasonably safe required Arco to post warning signs in the station. The plaintiffs argue that Arco was negligent in failing to post a sign at the mini-serve pump which would have informed patrons that the attendant pumped the gasoline. Alternatively, they argue that Arco was negligent because it did not post a sign warning its patrons to be aware of other automobiles in the area. Even if we assume that Arco's failure to post an "attendant will pump gas" sign negligently increased the likelihood that customers would leave their vehicles to pump gas, the risk that a customer who left his vehicle to pump gas would be injured by a negligently operated motor vehicle was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of any negligent failure to post such a sign. As our cases often say, the defendant's negligence, if any, was not the proximate cause of the injury. Cast differently, Arco's breach of duty did not create a risk of the species which was causally related to the result which occurred. Bellows v. Worcester Storage Co., 297 Mass. 188, 197, 7 N.E.2d 588 (1937). See Stone v Williams, 64 N.Y.2d 639, 642, 485 N.Y.S.2d 42, 474 N.E.2d 250 (1984) (plaintiff injured in rear end collision while checking whether attendant had securely replaced gas cap; held that breach of duty of service station, if any, was not proximate cause of plaintiff's...