CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's decision, ruling that a woman did not establish that the City of Logan breached any duty owed to her.
The West Virginia Supreme Court applied the principle of foreseeability in the 3-2 court opinion, stating that a person is not liable for damages from an event that could not have been anticipated. Since there was no indication that the city knew or should have known about the wire's hazard, it was entitled to summary judgment.
Chief Justice Tim Armstead authored the majority opinion. Justices John Hutchison and Bill Wooton dissented and authored separate opinions.
"The City of Logan did not cause the Plaintiff to trip and fall on its sidewalk and we were pleased with the decision of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals," Duane J. Ruggier II, an attorney at Pullin, Fowler, Flanagan, Brown & Poe, who represented the city of Logan, said in an interview with The West Virginia Record.
Denise Orso alleged that she fell and was injured in Logan after her right foot got caught in a loop of cable wire that extended onto a sidewalk from a post owned by the First Baptist Church of Logan.
Orso claimed that the city of Logan was liable for her injuries due to negligence in maintaining the sidewalk. The circuit court granted summary judgment for the respondent, finding insufficient evidence to support a negligence claim under West Virginia law.
On appeal, the petitioner argued that she established the elements of duty, breach and causation, and genuine issues of fact remained. However, the court affirmed the summary judgment, stating that the petitioner failed to demonstrate the respondent's breach of duty.
The incident occurred on Oct. 1, 2018, when the petitioner was walking her usual lunch break route. She encountered a loop of cable wire on the sidewalk, tripped and fell, resulting in injuries.
During discovery, it was revealed that the church owned the wire and post, which had been there for at least ten years. The church claimed they were unaware of any hazard posed by the wire. The petitioner testified that she had never noticed the wire before the incident.
The respondent's Street Commissioner testified that property owners are responsible for sidewalk maintenance under city ordinances.
The respondent did not own the wire, had no reports of it being a hazard, and was unaware of its presence on the sidewalk, the Supreme Court opinion states.
The court emphasized that negligence requires the breach of a duty owed to the plaintiff.
The court cited previous cases stating that negligence is relative to the circumstances.
In this case, the petitioner had walked by the area for over a year without incident, and the wire had been there for a decade without causing problems. There was no evidence that the respondent knew or should have known about the wire being a hazard.
In his dissenting opinion, Wooton discussed the legal principle that negligence requires a breach of duty, which is not an absolute concept but relative to the circumstances.
Wooton argued that a jury should have decided if it was foreseeable for the city to know about a hazardous wire on the sidewalk, as the city's personnel conducted regular inspections.
The dissent disagrees with the majority's decision to grant summary judgment to the city, stating that there is at least one issue that should be decided by a jury.
Hutchison agreed with Wooton in his dissent.
"I join Justice Wooton in dissenting from the majority’s opinion," he wrote in his separate dissenting opinion. "Justice Wooton correctly points out that our law is clear: if facts about the foreseeability of a plaintiff’s injury are disputed, or if different conclusions can be drawn about the existence and extent of the defendant’s duty to protect against that injury, then resolution of those disputed facts or interpretations is for a jury, not a judge."
Both the circuit court and the majority opinion "ignored this black-letter principle of the law and wrongly substituted their own spin on the facts," Hutchison wrote.
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case number: 22-0625