LANSING, Mich. (Legal Newsline) - True Value still isn’t liable for a tragic accident where a U-Haul van crushed a customer against a wall, a Michigan appeals court ruled, despite a landmark decision by the state’s highest court making it harder for property owners to defend claims over “open and obvious” risks.
In a July ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court eliminated the defense that landowners have no duty to protect visitors from hazards such as potholes and snow and ice on a walkway that are clearly visible and easily avoided. The practical effect of the decision was to make it harder to get lawsuits dismissed based on the pleadings, making it easier for plaintiff lawyers to negotiate settlements with defendants who otherwise face the costs of preparing for trial.
The Supreme Court decision didn’t help plaintiff Sorin Milhaltan, however, who sued over the death of his father after the elder Mihaltan was crushed between a U-Haul truck and the wall of a True Value store in Redford Township. Milhaltan argued the parking lot was to blame, while True Value said the accident occurred because the U Haul driver’s leg cramped, causing her to hit the gas pedal.
A trial judge allowed the case to proceed but the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed, calling the trial judge’s ruling “logically inconsistent” because it assumed an ordinary person couldn’t anticipate a truck crashing into them but True Value could.
The Michigan Supreme Court vacated that decision in the wake of its decisions in Kandil-Elsayad v. F&E Oil and Pinsky v. Kroger, which held a landowner may be liable even for open and obvious hazards if he doesn’t exercise “reasonable care” to protect visitors from them.
Milhaltan failed to make a viable claim even under the looser standard, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in a Jan. 11 unpublished per curiam opinion. It once again criticized the argument True Value should have protected the plaintiff’s father from the risk of an uncontrolled vehicle crashing into him in a parking lot where all the features were clearly visible and built to engineering standards.
“It is difficult to understand how defendants should have predicted the event at issue long before it happened, and yet at the same time, how decedent could not immediately see the risk of the event (being struck by a clearly running U-Haul) when he chose to walk in front of it,” the appeals court ruled.