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Ryder v. Mitchell9/16/2002
mmary judgment is de novo. Vail/Arrowhead, Inc., 954 P.2d at 611; see also Joe Dickerson & Assocs. v. Dittmar, 34 P.3d 995, 1003 (Colo. 2001) (holding that an appellate court reviews a trial court's grant of a summary judgment motion de novo because it is a question of law); Feiger, Collison & Killmer v. Jones, 926 P.2d 1244, 1250 (Colo. 1996) ("All summary judgments are rulings of law in the sense that they may not rest on the resolution of disputed facts. We recognize this by our de novo standard of reviewing summary judgments.")(quoting Black v. J.I. Case Co., 22 F.3d 568, 571 n. 5 (5th Cir. 1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). In the case before the court, the question of the existence or non-existence of a duty from a therapist to a non-patient is a question of law. On summary judgment, the trial court concluded that the defendant owed no duty to the plaintiff; the court of appeals reviewed that conclusion de novo and reversed it. It now falls to us to resolve the legal issue.
B.
The plaintiff contends that, because no finder of fact has ever examined the evidence in this case, "there remain many more unresolved points of contention concerning who did what to whom." However, the only salient issue of fact is determining who Ryder's patients were. When addressing findings of fact, we are bound by the trial court's determinations if they are supported by substantial evidence in the record. E.g., Fowler Irrevocable Trust 1992-1 v. City of Boulder, 17 P.3d 797, 802 (Colo. 2001); Mallon Oil Co. v. Bowen/Edwards Assocs., 965 P.2d 105, 110 (Colo. 1998). After examining that evidence, we agree with the trial court that the plaintiff failed to sustain her burden of presenting sufficient evidence to establish that the defendant was the entire family's therapist and therefore owed a physician-patient duty to the plaintiff in addition to her duty to the children. We need look no further into the facts in order to address this case.
III.
Hence, we arrive at the crux of the case: did the defendant owe the plaintiff a duty of care when she sent the letter including her opinion regarding the presence of parental alienation to three individuals: the plaintiff, Mitchell, and the children's new therapist. The defendant contends that by holding defendant to a duty of care to a non-patient third party, the court of appeals has inappropriately extended the general principles of negligence. We agree.
A.
To establish a prima facie case for negligence, a plaintiff must show that the defendant owed a legal duty of care to the plaintiff, the defendant breached that duty, the plaintiff suffered injury , and the defendant's breach caused the plaintiff's injury. Greenberg v. Perkins, 845 P.2d 530, 533 (Colo. 1993). If a negligence action is based on facts that do not impose a duty of care upon a defendant for a plaintiff's benefit, the claim will fail. Id.; Perreira v. Colorado, 768 P.2d 1198, 1208 (Colo. 1989).
Whether a specific defendant owes a specific plaintiff a legal duty and the scope of any such duty are questions of law properly determined by a court. Martinez v. Lewis, 969 P.2d 213, 218 (Colo. 1998); Greenberg, 845 P.2d at 536. A court's determination regarding the existence of a legal duty is "`an expression of the sum total of those considerations of policy which lead the law to say that the plaintiff is [or is not] entitled to protection.'" Univ. of Denver v. Whitlock, 744 P.2d 54, 57 (quoting W. Page Keeton, et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts ยง 53, at 358 (5th ed. 1984)) (alterations in Whitlock). The court should base its determination on several factors including: the risk involved, the foreseeability and likeli
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