By Lee Dryden
BridgeTower Media Newswires
DETROIT—A company that provides custodial and maintenance employees to a school district does not owe a duty to a student who was injured when he sat on a defective cafeteria seat, a Michigan Court of Appeals panel has ruled.
In Jackson-James v. Redford Union High School, the plaintiff brought a negligence claim against defendant Grand River Building Services Inc. (GRBS), which supplies employees to the Redford Union School District.
Among the allegations was that GRBS breached its duties in numerous ways, including failing to correct a dangerous defect.
The Wayne County Circuit Court granted GRBS’ motion for summary disposition, concluding that “there was no evidence presented in support of plaintiff’s contention that GRBS owed him a duty under the contract between GRBS and Redford, which did not require GRBS to provide maintenance for the cafeteria during the summer months.”
An appeals court panel of Judges Kathleen Jansen, Patrick M. Meter and Cynthia Diane Stephens affirmed in an Oct. 11 unpublished per curiam opinion.
The case
In July 2013, the plaintiff suffered injuries from a metal pole protruding upward from a cafeteria seat during a Redford summer lunch program.
A GRBS employee subsequently replaced all of the broken seats in the cafeteria, including the one that caused the plaintiff’s injury, according to the appeals court opinion.
The plaintiff filed a complaint that eventually included several parties as defendants, including the school district and GRBS.
The trial court dismissed all of the plaintiff’s claims. The plaintiff challenged only the trial court’s order granting GRBS’ motion for summary disposition.
The complaint alleged that GRBS should have known that the chair was dangerous and failed to warn of dangers associated with the defect, along with failure to inspect, repair and maintain the chair.
GRBS argued that it was not liable for the plaintiff’s injuries because it did not owe the plaintiff a duty sufficient to sustain plaintiff’s negligence claim, it was not in possession of the premises and did not have control over the premises at the time of the incident, and it did not create the condition that resulted in plaintiff’s injuries, according to the opinion.
Along with ruling there was no evidence that GRBS owed a duty, the trial court ruled there was no evidence presented regarding when the defective seat “actually became defective.”
“The trial court also found that plaintiff was not entitled to relief on a premises-liability theory because GRBS did not have control or possession of the premises at the time of plaintiff’s injury and because GRBS did not create the hazardous condition that led to the injury,” the opinion stated.
Under the contract terms, GRBS employees were required to wash all furniture during summer breaks, but the contract “explicitly indicated that this obligation did not apply to tables and chairs except during the school year,” according to the opinion.
The contract also provided for an unidentified and undefined “contractual manager,” who was required to “report potentially hazardous conditions and items in need of repair including office lighting, emergency and exit lights, plumbing, and water cooler problems, etc., to the Operations office.”
“Because this language appears to provide only a nonexhaustive list of hazardous conditions that must be reported, it could be interpreted to extend to items such as cafeteria seats. Nevertheless, as previously discussed, a contracting party’s failure to perform a contractual promise does not constitute grounds for a third-party tort claim,” the opinion stated, citing Fultz v. Union-Commerce Assoc (2004).
The plaintiff’s side argued that the deposition testimony of two district officials “established that GRBS employees were required to inspect the chairs in the cafeteria and to conduct the appropriate repairs if defects were discovered.”
“However, under the specifically-worded written contract between GRBS and the District, GRBS employees were not required to take such actions,” the panel stated, adding that the trial court “did not err by declining to rely on this deposition testimony to find a duty for purposes of a tort claim.”
“Plaintiff is correct that if GRBS employees were engaged in an undertaking, they were required to exercise ordinary care,” the panel stated, citing Loweke v. Ann Arbor Ceiling & Partition Co. LLC (2011). “However, plaintiff has failed to present any evidence that a GRBS employee performed any action — even routine cleaning — on the cafeteria seats. The witness testimony established, at most, that GRBS employees cleaned only the surfaces of the cafeteria tables and the floors.
“Because GRBS employees did not perform any maintenance or exercise any influence over the cafeteria seats, they owed plaintiff no duty of ordinary care under the common law.”
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