Casualty

Key Points:

• Property owner is not, by that status alone, responsible for injuries caused solely by a tenant or lessee’s activities on the property.
• Property owner’s right to enter leased premises is not sufficient to constitute control over property so as to impose duty on landlord to protect third parties, even where property owner may have been able to generally instruct people not to do certain activities.

It happens all the time. A complaint comes in, there are several counts with several theories of liability seeking damages for personal injuries, seemingly based on the simple fact that the named defendant(s) own the property. In a lengthy discussion on the theories commonly (and sometimes uncommonly seen), the Second District Court of Appeal in the case of Ruiz v. Wendy’s Trucking, LLC, et al., 2022 WL 4389879 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App., Sept. 23, 2022), affirmed a summary judgment in favor of the defendant property owner faced with such theories.

The plaintiff, Antonio Ruiz, was severely injured while performing maintenance on a commercial truck owned by a third party, Wendy Carbrera, in a parking lot owned by the defendants, Roberto and Jesus Garcia. The Garcias hired a third party, Eglisbel Ginarte, to find truck owners to enter into leases for parking spots on a portion of the lot. At the time of the accident, there was no written lease agreement between Carbera and the Garcias.

The plaintiff’s operable complaint alleged that the Garcias, as the lot owners, had a non-delegable duty to maintain their premises in a reasonably safe condition and to prevent unreasonable and dangerous activities on the lot. After several depositions, with varied testimony regarding the repair work on the property, the Garcias filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing there was no evidence that the condition on the property caused the accident. They also argued the plaintiff was a licensee on the property (such that the duty of reasonable care did not apply).

The plaintiff responded to the motion for summary judgment, arguing that there was a disputed material fact as to whether the Garcias created a foreseeable zone of risk by permitting the repairs on their lot without proper safety measures. They also argued that the Garcias owed the plaintiff a duty of reasonable care under the ordinary negligence standard because the accident, based on testimony and evidence, was a result of their active or passive negligence rather than a defective condition of the lot.

The trial court ruled that there was no duty owed to the plaintiff based on the facts of the case, which involved a truck that had been permitted to be parked on the lot. The plaintiff appealed to the Second District Court of Appeal, which affirmed that the Garcias, as property owners, did not owe a duty to the plaintiff.

In its discussion of the plaintiff’s ordinary negligence liability/premises liability theories, the court addressed the plaintiff’s “active” negligence theory by finding that there was no active negligence by the Garcias as property owners because the accident (the truck breaking loose from whatever was holding it in place and running over a person) could have happened anywhere. Had it happened off the Garcias’ property, then the plaintiff would have had no basis to sue the defendants. There was no evidence that this was a case where the property owner or one of his/her agents operated equipment on the property and created a dangerous condition.

The court then turned to the plaintiff’s allegation that the Garcias failed to prohibit mechanical repairs on the lot or implement safeguards regarding same, which it considered to be an allegation of “passive” negligence under both the ordinary negligence theory and premises liability theory. Even if the plaintiff was considered an invitee, the same standard of reasonable care applied under both of these theories.

The court distilled the plaintiff’s argument as follows: that the Garcias owed the plaintiff a duty to prevent mechanical work from being performed on the lot by its lessees or invitees without having safeguards in place. The court ruled that there was no known dangerous condition because it was undisputed the lot was being used for parking, and the Garcias did not create a dangerous condition by owning the lot and allowing trucks to park there. The court specifically indicated that, if a dangerous condition was created by the mechanical work on the lot, the Garcias had no involvement in it because the condition was created by truck owners (lessees), who had requested such work to be done on the lot or by truck mechanics (the plaintiff), who had opted to perform work on the lot themselves.

The plaintiff further argued that the right to control the property by the Garcias (the right to enter the property and stop people from working on the trucks) was a factual issue to be determined by the jury, such that a genuine material issue of fact prohibited entry of summary judgment. The court found that even though the Garcias may have been able to generally instruct people to stop performing mechanical work on the lot, this did not render them in control of their lessees’ (i.e., owners of the trucks who lease parking space from the Garcias on the lot) operations and activities.

Defending these type of cases necessarily involves navigating a response to all attempts by plaintiffs’ attorneys to establish a duty of care on the part of a property owner under Florida case law. The Second District Court of Appeal’s analysis and holding in Ruiz provides a roadmap for evaluation of the heavily fact-dependent question of property owner liability.