Gongwer News Service
The Wayne Circuit Court did not err when it dismissed a premises liability claim for a plaintiff who was injured at the Detroit Metro Airport, nor did it err when it did not dismiss a general negligence claim against an airline, the Court of Appeals ruled Thursday in a 2-1 decision.
In a per curiam unpublished opinion released Friday, signed by Judge Anica Letica and Judge Philip Mariani, the panel in Love v. Alaska Airlines Inc. (COA Docket No. 364791) affirmed both rulings of the trial court.
Judge Mark Boonstra wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he agreed with the majority on summary disposition granted in favor Alaska Airlines but disagreed on the decision to affirm the trial court’s denial of summary disposition on the negligence claim.
The case involved an incident involving the plaintiff, who was working as a ticket counter at the North Terminal of the Detroit Metro Airport. In essence, she was injured on a workstation conveyor belt, causing her to fall and sustain an injury to the head and her right side.
The parties disputed whether the plaintiff obtained verbal confirmation from her coworkers before stepping onto the conveyor belt.
She then sued Alaska Airlines, the Wayne County Airport Authority and the Detroit Airlines North Terminal Consortium, or DANTEC, which is a group created by several airline carriers to provide management services at the North Terminal.
The trial court in September 2022 granted motions for summary disposition in part and denied in part. The judge ordered the dismissal of the premises liability claim based on the defendant’s lack of possession or control of the conveyor belt and the open and obvious hazard doctrine but concluded that the general negligence claim could survive because there was genuine issue of fact regarding the policy of traversing the belt in the face of safer options to access a workstation.
Upon appeal, Letica and Mariani disagreed with the plaintiff, who argued the defendants were in possession and control of the ticket counter and conveyor system. The judges said that overall, the plaintiff failed to establish that claim.
“The lease agreement between defendant and the WCAA granted defendant a right to use the Common Use Facilities, which included the ticket counter. But that right of use was not ‘to the exclusion of all others,’ as required for possession,” the opinion said. “Rather, as expressly stated in the lease agreement, the defendant’s right of use was ‘in common with all other air carriers operating … in the North Terminal.’ The plaintiff points to the fact that the defendant has utilized a specific section of the North Terminal since 2014 and claims that the defendant exercises full possession and control of its ‘leased space’ during its hours of operation. But the ‘leased space’ that the plaintiff refers to is the ‘common use ticket counter,’ and the defendant undisputedly shares that space with the other air carriers in the terminal.”
As to the airline’s argument, Letica and Mariani said they agreed with the trial court that the defendant did not show an entitlement to summary disposition.
“We agree that the plaintiff’s premises-liability claim is precluded because the defendant lacked the requisite possession and control over the ticket counter and therefore owed no duty to plaintiff as a premises possessor,” the opinion said. “But that a defendant does not owe the duty of a premises possessor to the plaintiff does not mean that the defendant owes no duty of any sort to the plaintiff, or cannot be held liable in tort for its conduct on the premises at issue.”
Boonstra, in dissent, said the trial court’s rationale was that the plaintiff’s negligence claim survived because there remained a question of fact whether the policy of traversing the conveyor belt in the face of safer options constituted general negligence.
“Candidly, no one knows what this means. It is undisputed that the recommended policy was not to traverse a conveyor belt in the manner that the plaintiff chose. Rather, as the majority notes, the recommended policy was to traverse one’s own workstation conveyor belt (thereby avoiding any risk of activation),” Boonstra wrote. “The trial court thus appears to have erred by construing the policy as one of ‘traversing the conveyor belt in the face of safer options,’ when in fact the safer option would have been to follow the
recommended policy. The trial court also did not explain what it believed to be ‘safer options,’ and the parties have identified none other than following the recommended policy (which the plaintiff did not do).”
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
https://www.legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
