CAR CRASHING THROUGH SUPERMARKET DOORS WAS AN UNFORESEEABLE INTERVENING ACT; SUMMARY JUDGMENT PROPERLY GRANTED TO SUPERMARKET AND LANDOWNER.
The Second Department determined defendant supermarket (Stop & Shop) and plaza owner (Ridgeway) were entitled to summary judgment dismissing the complaint of a customer injured when a car crashed the glass doors in the bottle-return area. The incident was deemed an unforeseeable intervening act:
“A landowner has a duty to exercise reasonable care to maintain its premises 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'” … . However, a landowner does not have a “duty to protect against an occurrence which is extraordinary in nature and, as such, would not suggest itself to a reasonably careful and prudent person as one which should be guarded against” … . “There will ordinarily be no duty imposed on a defendant to prevent a third party from causing harm to another unless the intervening act which caused the plaintiff's injuries was a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant's negligence” … .
Here, Stop & Shop and Ridgeway established their prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law by demonstrating, through an expert's affidavit, that they maintained the premises in a reasonably safe condition and did not have a duty to construct and install bollards or other protective measures to protect against the conduct of the defendant driver … . Furthermore, Stop & Shop and Ridgeway established, prima facie, that the conduct of the defendant driver, in inexplicably losing control of her vehicle, was an unforeseeable intervening cause of the accident … . Stop & Shop and Ridgeway demonstrated, prima facie, that the location of the parking lot relative to the bottle return room merely furnished the condition or occasion for the accident, rather than one of its causes … . Dawkins v Mastrangelo, 2016 NY Slip Op 01459, 2nd Dept 3-2-16
NEGLIGENCE (CAR CRASHING THROUGH SUPERMARKET DOORS WAS AN UNFORESEEABLE INTERVENING ACT)/FORESEEABILITY (CAR CRASHING THROUGH SUPERMARKET DOORS WAS AN UNFORESEEABLE INTERVENING ACT)/INTERVENING ACT (CAR CRASHING THROUGH SUPERMARKET DOORS WAS AN UNFORESEEABLE INTERVENING ACT)