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Davis v. Dollar Rent a Car Systems11/17/2004
593 So. 2d 500 (Fla. 1992), to determine whether a duty of care exists. Instead, the trial court adopted a blanket rule that there is no common law duty owed by a private landowner whose property obscures the view of motorists on an adjacent highway or intersection. Accordingly, the trial court entered summary judgment in favor of Williams. For reasons we will now explain, we conclude that the foreseeable zone of risk standard must be applied and that application of this standard to the instant case prohibits the summary judgment entered in favor of Williams.
Summary judgment is appropriate when "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 the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.510(c). The courts must exercise restraint in granting summary judgments because they deprive a party of his or her right to trial. Clay Elec. Co-op., Inc. v. Johnson, 873 So. 2d 1182 (Fla. 2003). Accordingly, if the court has any doubts, those doubts must be resolved in favor of the nonmoving party. Clay Electric. In the instant case, we must review the trial court's ruling granting Williams' motion for summary judgment de novo because it poses a question of law. Id.
Williams contends that decisions rendered prior to McCain apply and that she owed no common law duty of care to Twanda in the instant case. See Pedigo v. Smith, 395 So. 2d 615, 616 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981) (" he owner of land is under no affirmative duty to remedy conditions of purely natural origin upon his land.") (citation omitted); Evans v. Southern Holding Corp., 391 So. 2d 231 (Fla. 3d DCA), pet. for review denied, 399 So. 2d 1142 (Fla. 1981). These decisions adopted the traditional view that a property owner owed no duty of care to motorists whose vision was obscured by natural conditions on the owners' property adjacent to the highway. The traditional view recognized, however, that a duty may be owed relating to artificial conditions (for example, foliage that was planted by the landowner) on the property that obscured a motorist's vision of the highway or intersection. Whitt v. Silverman, 788 So. 2d 210 (Fla. 2001). Hence, if we were to apply the traditional view as Williams contends, summary judgment would be improper because there is nothing in the record to indicate whether the foliage was natural or whether it was planted there by Williams.
However, the traditional view has been discarded by the Florida Supreme Court. Acknowledging the recent judicial trend by many courts to reject the dichotomy between artificial and natural conditions as outdated, the Florida Supreme Court held in Whitt that this distinction would no longer be recognized in determining whether a private landowner owed a duty of care to a motorist whose vision was obstructed by a condition on the owner's premises. Rather, the court held in Whitt that the foreseeable zone of risk analysis established in McCain was the proper legal standard to determine whether a duty of care was owed in such circumstances.
Whitt is analogous to the instant case. In Whitt, a customer of a service station was attempting to exit the premises when she struck two pedestrians, injuring one and killing the other. Because the property owners had a dense stand of foliage on the premises that blocked the driver's view of the sidewalk, the plaintiffs brought suit against the property owners. The trial court dismissed the common law negligence action, and the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed, concluding that the foliage did not protrude onto the public way and therefore there was no duty owed by the
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