Currin v. Rex Healthcare, Inc. ( 2014 )

An unpublished opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals does not constitute
controlling legal authority. Citation is disfavored, but may be permitted in accordance
with the provisions of Rule 30(e)(3) of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure.
NO. COA13-515
NORTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS
Filed: 18 February 2014
DONNA K. CURRIN,
Plaintiff
Harnett County
v.
No. 12 CVS 840
REX HEALTHCARE, INC. and REX
HOSPITAL, INC.,
Defendants
Appeal by plaintiff from order entered 18 January 2013 by
Judge Shannon R. Joseph in Harnett County Superior Court. Heard
in the Court of Appeals 26 September 2013.
Bain, Buzzard & McRae, LLP, by Edgar R. Bain and L. Stacy
Weaver III, for Plaintiff.
Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog LLP, by Jaye E. Bingham-Hinch and
F. Marshall Wall, for Defendants.
ERVIN, Judge.
Plaintiff Donna K. Currin appeals from an order granting
summary judgment in favor of Defendants Rex Healthcare, Inc.,
and Rex Hospital, Inc., with respect to a personal injury claim
that she had asserted against Defendants. On appeal, Plaintiff
argues that the trial court erroneously entered summary judgment
in favor of Defendants on the grounds that the record reflected
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the existence of genuine issues of material fact concerning the
extent to which Plaintiff sustained personal injury as the
result of Defendants’ negligence and the extent to which her
claim was barred on contributory negligence grounds. After
careful consideration of Plaintiff’s challenge to the trial
court’s order in light of the record and the applicable law, we
conclude that the trial court’s order should be affirmed.
I. Factual Background
A. Substantive Facts
As part of her treatment for breast cancer, Plaintiff
underwent surgery at Defendant Rex Hospital on 30 November 2009.
A few days later, Plaintiff began undergoing radiation therapy
at Defendant Rex Hospital. On eight separate occasions within
three days of the date upon which she was injured, including the
date upon which her injury occurred, Plaintiff went to Defendant
Rex Hospital for radiation therapy.
At 9:00 a.m. on 9 December 2009, Plaintiff went to receive
radiation therapy at Defendant Rex Hospital, having been driven
there by her daughter, Donna Lynn Currin. Plaintiff arrived for
her second treatment that day at 3:00 p.m. At approximately
3:30 p.m., after completing the second treatment, Plaintiff
exited Defendant Rex Hospital. As she left the facility and
headed across a circular driveway that ran in front of the
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hospital’s cancer center toward a parking facility that was
specifically reserved for oncology patients, Plaintiff was
walking alongside and talking with Ms. Currin. At the time that
she left Defendant Rex Hospital, Plaintiff felt “fine” and was
not experiencing any difficulty walking. Plaintiff did not have
any vision-related difficulties which would have prevented her
from seeing conditions at her feet.
Although Plaintiff has no memory of the events that
occurred after she left Defendant Rex Hospital, Ms. Currin
testified that, at the time of Plaintiff’s departure from the
hospital, the sun was out and the weather was clear. In
addition, no leaves or similar objects obscured the surface of
the area in which Plaintiff was walking.
As the two women crossed the driveway about six feet
outside a marked crosswalk, Plaintiff suddenly fell and landed
on her face. After Plaintiff fell, Ms. Currin attempted to
determine what could have caused her mother’s fall and observed
a plastic object in plain sight on the pavement. Neither
Plaintiff nor Ms. Currin had noticed the plastic object over
which Plaintiff fell at the time that they entered Defendant Rex
Hospital or as they returned to the parking lot prior to
Plaintiff’s fall. Ms. Currin photographed the area in which
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Plaintiff’s fall occurred on both the day on which her mother
fell and on the following evening.
After Ms. Currin called for help, a number of nurses and a
security guard came to Plaintiff’s assistance. Eventually,
Plaintiff was taken to the emergency room by stretcher. As a
result of her fall, Plaintiff broke her nose, hurt her knee, cut
her face, and still had facial scarring and knots on her knees
three years later.
As early as 2003, plastic bases into which stanchions could
be inserted had been placed in particular areas on the roads and
driveways around Defendant Rex Hospital to keep cars from
parking along the curb when parking spaces were unavailable, a
problem which had become acute during the construction of a new
parking deck. The bases utilized at Defendant Rex Hospital were
approximately six inches in diameter and one and a half to two
inches high, black in color, and connected to the asphalt by an
adhesive. The surface onto which the bases were affixed was
generally a “grayish black” color. The stanchions that were
inserted into the bases were either fluorescent orange or white.
After construction of the deck was completed, the stanchions
were removed from the plastic bases. When inclement weather
necessitated the closing of the Women’s Center Deck, poles would
be inserted into the plastic bases for the purpose of holding
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signs to redirect traffic. Although the bases, which had not
been used for months and which had been placed away from the
crosswalk, could have been removed with relative ease without
damaging the asphalt surface, they had been left in place
because they could not be reattached to the asphalt following
their removal and because procuring new bases would be
expensive.
Laura Reynolds, who served as Defendant Rex Hospital’s
Protective Services Manager, went to the location at which
Plaintiff had fallen before Plaintiff had been taken to the
emergency room. At the location in question, Ms. Reynolds
encountered Ms. Currin, who was irate about what had occurred.
Although it was customary for an investigative report to be
prepared when an injury occurred on the premises, no such report
was developed in this instance. Instead, Ms. Reynolds discussed
the situation with Defendant Rex Hospital’s director of
buildings and grounds. At the conclusion of that discussion,
the two of them decided to have the plastic bases removed and to
identify a new system for directing people to the parking deck,
and took steps to have that decision implemented on the
following date. Subsequently, the bases were removed.
According to Ms. Reynolds, the bases did not present a
hazard to anyone walking to the hospital. In addition, Randy
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Mullen, the facility maintenance manager in charge of the
hospital grounds, testified that safety inspections were
conducted at Defendant Rex Hospital and that he had never heard
of anyone else falling on one of the bases before the date upon
which Plaintiff was injured.
B. Procedural Facts
On 20 April 2012, Plaintiff filed a complaint in which she
sought to recover damages from Defendants on the grounds that
the injuries which she sustained on 9 December 2009 resulted
from their negligence. On 25 June 2012, Defendants filed an
answer in which they denied the material allegations of
Plaintiff’s complaint and asserted contributory negligence;
intervening, superseding, insulating, or concurring negligence;
and assumption of the risk as affirmative defenses. On 21
December 2012, Defendants filed a motion seeking the entry of
summary judgment in their favor on the grounds that the
undisputed facts showed that Plaintiff was not injured as a
proximate result of their negligence or, in the alternative,
that Plaintiff’s claim was barred by the doctrines of
contributory negligence or assumption of the risk. After
holding a hearing concerning the merits of Defendants’ summary
judgment motion, the trial court entered an order granting that
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motion on 18 January 2013. Plaintiff noted an appeal to this
Court from the trial court’s order.
II. Legal Analysis
A. Standard of Review
Summary judgment is appropriate “if the pleadings,
depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file,
together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no
genuine issue as to any material fact and that any party is
entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” N.C. Gen. Stat. §
1A-1, Rule 56(c). “In ruling on [a motion for summary
judgment,] the court must consider the evidence in the light
most favorable to the nonmovant, and the slightest doubt as to
the facts entitles him to a trial.” Williams v. 100 Block
Assocs., 132 N.C. App. 655, 657, 513 S.E.2d 582, 583 (1999)
(quotation marks omitted) (quoting Snipes v. Jackson, 69 N.C.
App. 64, 72, 316 S.E.2d 657, 661, disc. review denied, 312 N.C.
85, 321 S.E.2d 899 (1984)). As the Supreme Court has stated:
While [N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1A-1,] Rule 56,
like its federal counterpart, is available
in all types of litigation to both plaintiff
and defendant, we start with the general
proposition that issues of negligence . . .
are ordinarily not susceptible [to] summary
adjudication either for or against the
claimant, but should be resolved by trial in
the ordinary manner. It is only in
exceptional negligence cases that summary
judgment is appropriate. This is so because
the rule of the prudent man (or other
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applicable standard of care) must be
applied, and ordinarily the jury should
apply it under appropriate instructions from
the court.
Page v. Sloan, 281 N.C. 697, 706, 190 S.E.2d 189, 194 (1972)
(omission in original) (citations and quotation marks omitted).
Thus, a trial court should only grant summary judgment in the
event that the material facts, taken in the light must favorable
to the non-moving party, show no basis for any decision other
than the entry of judgment in favor of the moving party, with a
decision by a trial court to enter summary judgment in favor of
a particular party subject to de novo review on appeal. In re
Will of Jones, 362 N.C. 569, 573, 669 S.E.2d 572, 576 (2008)
(quoting Forbis v. Neal, 361 N.C. 519, 524, 649 S.E.2d 382, 385
(2007)).
B. Substantive Legal Analysis
A person or entity owning or controlling the use of
property is subject to “the duty to exercise reasonable care in
the maintenance of their premises for the protection of lawful
visitors.” Nelson v. Freeland, 349 N.C. 615, 632, 507 S.E.2d
882, 892 (1998). “In order to prove a defendant’s negligence, a
‘plaintiff must show that the defendant either (1) negligently
created the condition causing the injury, or (2) negligently
failed to correct the condition after actual or constructive
notice of its existence.’” Fox v. PGML, LLC, __ N.C. App. __,
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__, 744 S.E.2d 483, 485 (2013) (quoting Roumillat v. Simplistic
Enterprises, Inc., 331 N.C. 57, 64, 414 S.E.2d 339, 342-43
(1992)). “A landowner is under no duty to protect a visitor
against dangers either known or so obvious and apparent that
they reasonably may be expected to be discovered . . . [and]
need not warn of any ‘apparent hazards or circumstances of which
the invitee has equal or superior knowledge.’” Von Viczay v.
Thoms, 140 N.C. App. 737, 739, 538 S.E.2d 629, 631 (2000)
(citations omitted) (quoting Jenkins v. Lake Montonia Club,
Inc., 125 N.C. App. 102, 105, 479 S.E.2d 259, 262 (1997) ),
aff’d, 353 N.C. 445, 545 S.E.2d 210 (2001). However, “[i]f a
reasonable person would anticipate an unreasonable risk of harm
to a visitor on his property, notwithstanding the lawful
visitor’s knowledge of the danger or the obvious nature of the
danger, the landowner has a duty to take precautions to protect
the lawful visitor.” Martishius v. Carolco Studios, Inc., 142
N.C. App. 216, 223, 542 S.E.2d 303, 308 (2001), aff’d, 355 N.C.
465, 562 S.E.2d 887 (2002).
In seeking to persuade us that the trial court erred by
granting summary judgment in favor of Defendants, Plaintiff
argues that she was injured as the result of Defendants’
negligence on the grounds that the base over which she tripped
was not an apparent hazard and posed a foreseeable risk of harm
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to pedestrians in the area in which Plaintiff was walking at the
time that she fell and that Defendants were negligent in
creating such an obstacle and in failing to remove it. In the
alternative, Plaintiff contends that, at an absolute minimum,
there was a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether
the base was apparent, a determination which, if accepted, would
preclude a decision to grant summary judgment in Defendants’
favor. We do not find Plaintiff’s arguments persuasive.
In seeking to persuade us that the base over which she fell
was not apparent, Plaintiff relies upon a number of different
factors. More particularly, Plaintiff argues that the base was
too small to be visible and was located on “a surface of the
same color.” In addition, Plaintiff points out that the base
was not at eye level and emphasizes the fact that a reasonable
person would expect the surface of a driveway to be smooth. As
the result of all of these factors, Plaintiff contends that the
base over which she fell was not apparent and that Defendants
should, for that reason, be deemed to have acted negligently by
installing the base and by failing to remove it prior to the
date upon which she was injured.
A careful examination of the undisputed evidence presented
for the trial court’s consideration at the time of the summary
judgment hearing establishes that the base over which Plaintiff
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fell was six inches in diameter and approximately two inches
tall. At the time that Plaintiff fell, the weather was clear,
the sun was out, and no leaves or similar objects covered the
base or otherwise interfered with Plaintiff’s ability to see it.
The photographs contained in the record, including those taken
by Ms. Currin on the following evening, show that the base was
not identical in color to the driveway surface and was easily
visible at night. Despite arguing that Defendants were
negligent because the base was not at eye level, Plaintiff has
cited no authority tending to suggest that the fact that an
object over which a plaintiff trips was not at eye level has any
specific bearing on the issue of whether that object was
apparent for purposes of North Carolina negligence law, and we
have found no such authority in the course of our own research.
Instead, “our prior cases merely establish that the facts must
be viewed in their totality to determine if there are factors
which make the existence of a defect in a sidewalk, in light of
the surrounding conditions, a breach of the defendant’s duty and
less than ‘obvious’ to the plaintiff.” Pulley v. Rex Hosp., 326
N.C. 701, 706, 392 S.E.2d 380, 384 (1990). As a result, after
considering all of the evidence contained in the record in
light of the totality of the circumstances, we conclude that
there is no genuine issue of material fact concerning the extent
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to which the base over which Plaintiff tripped constituted an
apparent hazard and that the base in question was, in fact,
apparent.
In an attempt to avoid the obvious legal implications of
this determination, Plaintiff contends that, even if the base
over which she fell constituted an apparent hazard, the trial
court erred by granting summary judgment in favor of Defendants
on the grounds that the record demonstrates the existence of a
genuine issue of material fact concerning whether she should
have been expected to see the base over which she fell.1 More
specifically, Plaintiff argues, in reliance upon the Supreme
Court’s decision in Pulley, that “facts must be viewed in their
totality to determine if there are factors which make the
existence of a defect in a sidewalk, in light of the surrounding
conditions, a breach of the defendant’s duty and less than
‘obvious’ to the plaintiff” and that such factors “include the
1
The decisions upon which Plaintiff relies inconsistently
address the extent to which a plaintiff could have reasonably
failed to observe an otherwise apparent hazard as having to do
with the issue of the defendant’s negligence or the plaintiff’s
contributory negligence. As a result of the fact that there are
decisions that adopt both approaches, the fact that the
decisions addressing this issue discuss cases sounding in both
negligence and contributory negligence interchangeably, and the
fact that we need not resolve that analytical issue in order to
decide this case, we will not attempt to determine which
approach is preferable and will, for simplicity’s sake, address
the decisions upon which Plaintiff relies as relevant to the
issue of Defendants’ negligence rather than Plaintiff’s
contributory negligence.
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nature of the defect in the sidewalk, the lighting at the time
of the accident, and whether any other reasonably foreseeable
conditions existed which might have distracted the attention of
one walking on the sidewalk.” Id. (second emphasis added).
Although there are, as Plaintiff notes, a number of decisions
that establish that a plaintiff’s failure to detect and avoid an
obvious defect in a defendant’s property may be overlooked under
certain circumstances, we do not believe that those decisions
justify a decision to reverse the trial court’s order in this
instance.
In Norwood v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 303 N.C. 462, 468, 279
S.E.2d 559, 563 (1981), reversed in part, Nelson, 349 N.C. at
616, 507 S.E.2d at 883, the Supreme Court stated that, in
considering whether or not a plaintiff was contributorily
negligent for tripping over a generally visible hazard, “[t]he
question is not whether a reasonably prudent person would have
seen the [hazard] had he or she looked but whether a person
using ordinary care for his or her own safety under similar
circumstances would have looked down at the floor.” Based upon
that premise, the Supreme Court found the existence of a prima
facie case of negligence on the part of the defendant in a case
in which one of the defendant’s employees put a platform near an
aisle that “protruded into the aisle” and then “placed a display
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upon the platform and items along the aisle which were designed
and intended to draw the customer’s attention upward and away
from the floor.” 303 N.C. at 468, 279 S.E.2d at 563. Based
upon these facts, the Supreme Court found that a reasonable
juror could find that the plaintiff was not contributorily
negligent in failing to see the protrusion that led to the
plaintiff’s fall based upon the relatively dim lighting in the
store and the distractions to which the plaintiff was subject as
a result of the display. Id. at 469-70, 279 S.E.2d at 563-64.
This Court has reached similar results on a number of
occasions. In Dowless v. Kroger Co., 148 N.C. App. 168, 172-73,
557 S.E.2d 607, 610 (2001), we rejected the defendant’s
contention that a verdict should have been directed in its favor
given that the plaintiff injured herself by falling over an
“obvious hazard” and the plaintiff’s admission that, “if she had
looked down, there is no reason that she would not have seen the
hazard,” on the grounds that the shopping cart that the
plaintiff was returning partially blocked her view of the
pothole which caused her fall and that the plaintiff was focused
on the heavy traffic in the parking lot in which the pothole was
situated. Similarly, in Kremer v. Food Lion, Inc., 102 N.C.
App. 291, 295, 401 S.E.2d 837, 839 (1991), we noted that,
“[a]lthough failure to discover an obvious defect will usually
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be considered contributory negligence as a matter of law, this
general rule does not apply when circumstances divert the
attention of an ordinarily prudent person from discovering an
existing dangerous condition.” As a result, we held that the
trial court properly denied the defendant’s directed verdict
motion because “[e]vidence was offered that items were placed
above the cooler [to which the plaintiff was walking] designed
to draw the attention of shoppers.” Id. Finally, in Price v.
Jack Eckerd Corp., 100 N.C. App. 732, 736, 398 S.E.2d 49, 52
(1990), we held that “the evidence support[ed] a reasonable
inference or conclusion that [the plaintiff] was not
[contributorily] negligent in failing to look down at the floor”
given the “possibility that the plaintiff’s attention was
diverted by the cashier’s directions and by the advertisements.”
In explaining our decision, we stated that:
When a plaintiff does not discover and avoid
an obvious defect, that plaintiff will
usually be considered to have been
[contributorily] negligent as a matter of
law. However, where there is some fact,
condition, or circumstance which would or
might divert the attention of an ordinarily
prudent person from discovering or seeing an
existing dangerous condition, the general
rule does not apply. Additionally, our
Supreme Court has rejected an unbending
application of the general rule stating that
the contributory negligence defense does not
automatically bar from recovery the
plaintiff who trips or falls over an object
on the premises of another, even when the
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object was in a position at which the
plaintiff would have seen it had he or she
looked.
Id. (citations and quotation marks omitted) (quoting Norwood,
303 N.C. at 468, 279 S.E.2d at 563 and Thomas v. Dixson, 88 N.C.
App. 337, 341, 363 S.E.2d 209, 212 (1988)). As a result, a
number of decisions of the Supreme Court and this Court
establish that, in the event that other conditions existing in
the vicinity of the object over which the plaintiff fell
distracted his or her attention or interfered with his or her
vision, the existence of an apparent hazard does not bar the
plaintiff’s right to recover damages for personal injury.
The decisions in question do not, however, suffice to
justify a decision to overturn the trial court’s order granting
summary judgment in Defendants’ favor. As we have already
noted, each of the decisions upon which Plaintiff relies
involved the presence of a factor that could have obstructed the
plaintiff’s ability to see an apparent hazard or operated to
distract the plaintiff’s attention from an apparent hazard. A
careful review of the record reveals the absence of any evidence
tending to show that other conditions in the vicinity of the
base over which Plaintiff tripped had the potential to obstruct
her ability to see the base or distract her attention. As a
result, the trial court did not err by refusing to deny
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Defendants’ summary judgment motion on the theory that
Plaintiff’s failure to see the base over which she fell could be
explained by other conditions in the area.
III. Conclusion
Thus, for the reasons set forth above, we conclude that the
trial court did not err by granting summary judgment in favor of
Defendants. As a result, the trial court’s order should be, and
hereby is, affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
Judges ROBERT N. HUNTER, JR., and DAVIS concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).