Parsons v. Crown Disposal Co. (15 Cal. 4th 456, 1997)

Opinion

GEORGE, C. J.

Plaintiff was thrown from the horse on which he was riding after the horse was frightened by loud noises from a nearby garbage truck that was operating in its normal manner. Plaintiff sought recovery for his injuries from defendant garbage company, but the trial court granted summary judgment for defendant. The Court of Appeal reversed, concluding that under the applicable common law authorities and this court’s decision in Knight v. Jewett (1992) 3 Cal.4th 296 [11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696] (Knight), defendant owed a duty to plaintiff to avoid increasing the risk of harm over that inherent in the recreational activity of horseback riding, and that there was a triable issue of fact as to whether defendant had breached that duty.

We conclude that the Court of Appeal erred in reversing the trial court judgment in favor of defendant. As we shall explain, the Court of Appeal’s mistaken analysis of, and conclusion on, the duty question posed here rested in part upon the appellate court’s misapplication of the common law cases concerning liability for injury caused by fright to horses, and in part upon its misunderstanding of our decision in Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296.

As discussed below, for more than 150 years courts have recognized that a defendant breaches no duty of care merely by operating socially beneficial machinery in a manner that is regular and necessary, even if such ordinary operation happens to frighten a nearby horse and, as a result of the horse’s reaction, some injury or damage ensues. This long-standing line of authority establishes that although defendant had a duty to conduct its garbage collection activity in a prudent fashion (and to use due care to avoid making unusual noises unnecessary to accomplish its task), it had no duty to avoid making the regular noises that were a normal incident to its operations merely because of the possibility that these ordinary operations might happen to frighten a horse that was in the vicinity of its truck. Once the scope of defendant’s duty of care is properly understood, we believe it is clear that the record in this case discloses no evidence that defendant breached its duty of care to plaintiff and, thus, that the trial court properly entered summary judgment in favor of defendant. Hence, we shall reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal setting aside the trial court’s judgment.

Contrary to what is implied in the Court of Appeal’s reasoning, neither Knight nor its progeny established a broad, expansive duty on the part of defendant to avoid increasing the risk of harm to plaintiff over that inherent in the recreational activity of horseback riding—a purported duty that takes no account of the established authority recognizing reasonable limitations on the responsibility of others for the risk of injury arising from the skittishness of horses. Although the decision in Knight clarified the nature and scope of the duty owed by a participant in an active sport to other coparticipants in the sport, and also explained that, in light of the adoption of comparative fault principles, the assumption of risk doctrine completely bars a plaintiff’s action only in those instances in which the defendant has not breached any duty of care to the plaintiff, Knight did not purport to establish the parameters of the duty of care owed by all potential defendants to persons who happen to be engaged in a sport or activity at the time they sustain an injury. In this case, in which defendant had no participatory involvement in the activity undertaken by plaintiff, the decision in Knight does not define whatever duty was owed by defendant to plaintiff. As already noted, the nature and scope of defendant’s duty in these circumstances is established by the considerable line of authority addressing the question of a defendant’s potential liability for injuries resulting from the frightening of a horse.

I

According to declarations and deposition transcripts submitted in support of and in opposition to defendant’s motion for summary judgment, at 10:00 a.m. on a Monday in early December 1991, plaintiff Darrell Parsons rode his horse, Poco, on a public bridle path adjacent to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in the City of Burbank. This portion of the bridle path is about a mile long, and at one point runs parallel to and fewer than 10 feet from a chain link fence, on the other side of which is a parking lot located to the rear of a restaurant.

At the same time that plaintiff rounded a comer and approached this location, a trash collection truck operated by defendant’s employee, Efren Ramirez, was in the process of picking up and emptying a large debris bin located next to the fence in the restaurant’s parking lot. While the tmck stood stationary, Ramirez, from inside the track’s cab, inserted mechanical forks into the trash bin. Plaintiff, in deposition testimony appended to defendant’s motion for summary judgment and thereafter lodged with the court by plaintiff, testified as follows: When he was approximately 10 feet from the track, he noticed his horse look directly at the track and “begin to tense up.” The bin was lifted off the ground, to the height of the track’s windshield. Ramirez began shaking the bin up and down, apparently to settle its contents before taking the bin “all the way up and over” his cab to empty it into the track bed. Plaintiff saw Ramirez “in the side-view mirror,” at which time Ramirez proceeded “to go ahead up with the trash bin and all I heard was—evidently there were bottles and cans in the trash bin and the loudest noise—I can’t begin to explain how loud that noise was. [*fl] By then my horse is bolting and spinning and bucking and that’s when I landed . . . on the concrete.” According to plaintiff, “it was a matter of split seconds [from] when I turned onto that trail [until] what happened.”

The parties stipulated that both plaintiff and Ramirez knew that horses are susceptible to being frightened, and that Ramirez had known for two years that the restaurant abutted a bridle path frequented by horses and their riders. The record contains no evidence that Ramirez saw plaintiff (or that plaintiff was within Ramirez’s view) until after plaintiff was thrown and injured. Indeed, plaintiff’s own deposition testimony, noting that he saw Ramirez in the side-view mirror, suggests that plaintiff’s horse reacted to the noise and became uncontrollable while plaintiff and his horse were behind defendant’s truck.

Plaintiff’s complaint for damages alleged, as the basis for defendant’s liability, that defendant “negligently operated a trash collection vehicle so as to scare plaintiff’s horse, causing plaintiff to be thrown from the horse to the ground and to proximately and legally cause injuries and damages to plaintiff. . . .”

Defendant filed an answer asserting that plaintiff had failed to state a cause of action. Thereafter defendant filed a motion for summary judgment based on ostensibly alternative, but, as explained herein, essentially identical grounds. First, defendant asserted it owed plaintiff no duty to guard against the injuries complained of, citing in support the policy considerations set out in Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, 112-113 [70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561, 32 A.L.R.3d 496] and other cases. Second, defendant asserted, plaintiff’s recovery was barred under the doctrine of “primary assumption of risk,” as set out in our then recent opinions, Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296, and Ford v. Gouin (1992) 3 Cal.4th 339 [11 Cal.Rptr.2d 30, 834 P.2d 724, 34 A.L.R.5th 769]. Plaintiff responded that summary judgment should be denied because it could not be determined as a matter of law that defendant breached no duty owed to plaintiff.

The trial court granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment. The Court of Appeal reversed, concluding that defendant owed and possibly breached a duty to use care not to frighten horses being ridden on the trail, and that the case thus fell outside the bar of primary assumption of risk. We granted review.

II

A “motion for summary judgment shall be granted if all of the papers submitted show that there is no triable issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. In determining whether the papers show that there is no triable issue as to any material fact the court shall consider all of the evidence set forth in the papers, . . . and all inferences reasonably deducible from the evidence . . . .” (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c).) A defendant “has met his or her burden of showing that a cause of action has no merit if that party has shown that one or more elements of the cause of action, even if not separately pleaded, cannot be established, or that there is a complete defense to that cause of action. Once the defendant. . . has met that burden, the burden shifts to the plaintiff. . . to show that a triable issue of one or more material facts exists as to that cause of action or a defense thereto. . . .” (Id., subd. (o)(2).)

On review of an order granting or denying summary judgment, we examine the facts presented to the trial court and determine their effect as a matter of law. In this case, defendant asserted, and the trial court found, that plaintiff’s evidence failed to establish the “duty” element of plaintiff’s cause of action for negligence. Duty, being a question of law, is particularly amenable to resolution by summary judgment. (Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296, 313.)

We held in Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296, that a participant in an active sport owes only a limited duty of care to coparticipants—a duty to avoid intentional injury or conduct so reckless as to be totally outside the range of ordinary activity involved in the sport. (Id. at p. 320.) In the course of our discussion, we mentioned that “defendants generally . . . have a duty to use due care not to increase the risks to a participant over and above those inherent in the sport” (id. at p. 316), and we cited, as an example, the duty of a commercial sporting operator to maintain its premises or equipment so as not to expose its patrons to an increased risk of harm. (Ibid.)

The Court of Appeal below acknowledged that in the present case, unlike Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296, or the commercial operator example cited in our opinion, defendant and plaintiff had no relationship such as coparticipants in an active sport, or as recreational business operator and patron. The Court of Appeal nevertheless read the above quoted passage of Knight as imposing on defendants, generally, a duty—owed to all persons engaged in a sport or similar activity—not to increase the risks of harm over those inherent in the activity in which the plaintiff happens to be engaged. Moreover, the court asserted, such a duty to riders of horses, in particular, “was specifically recognized” under the common law. The Court of Appeal concluded that defendant owed a duty not to increase the risks to plaintiff over those inherent in the sport of recreational horseback riding, and that the public policy considerations set out in Rowland v. Christian, supra, 69 Cal.2d 108, 113, afforded no basis for declining to impose on defendant this asserted duty.

As described below, we conclude the Court of Appeal’s analysis was erroneous, both with regard to the scope of the general common law duty owed to horseback riders, and with respect to the proper interpretation of this court’s decision in Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296.

Ill

A

The present unfortunate encounter falls within a centuries-long continuum of contacts between horses and machinery. Whatever the standards of the leisure classes, as exemplified by the sentiment attributed to Mrs. Patrick Campbell (“My Dear, I don’t care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.”), the courts long have recognized that the needs of a modem, industrial society often conflict with and generally must prevail over the delicate sensibilities of horses. Well before Poco was spooked by defendant’s operation of its loud garbage truck with mechanical fork lifts, his equine ancestors similarly were frightened by shrieking, grinding, and hissing steam locomotives, motorized streetcars, steam rollers, motorcars, and numerous other contraptions of the industrial revolution. The attempts in this history to hold defendants liable for resulting injury to horse or rider were, with exceptions inapplicable here, uniformly rejected. Weighing the social utility of these machines and devices against the likelihood that horses might become frightened by the operation of such objects, the courts developed a remarkably uniform mle, holding that a plaintiff whose horse “shied” or “spooked” and caused damage because of the noise, sight, or odor caused by the defendant’s regular and necessary conduct, cannot state a cause of action for negligence, because the defendant in such a case has breached no duty of care.

For example, in Stanton v. Louisville & N. R. Co. (1891) 91 Ala. 382 [8 So. 798], the plaintiff waited in his horse and buggy at a railroad crossing while the highway was blocked by a stationary train. A second train approached, emitting steam and noise, which frightened the plaintiff’s mare, causing her to break loose and injure herself and damage the buggy. Affirming summary judgment for the defendant, the court observed: “The authority to operate a railroad includes the right to make the noise incident to the movement and working of its engines, as in the escape of steam and the rattling of cars . . . . It is not liable for injuries occasioned by horses, when being driven on the highway, taking fright at noises occasioned by the lawful and reasonable exercise of these rights and duties.” (Id. at p. 799.) The court concluded that because the plaintiff failed to show that the noises or emissions complained of were unusual or unnecessary to the regular operation of trains, the defendant breached no duty of care and could not be held liable. (Ibid.) Scores of decisions are in accord.

The same general rule has been applied in the decisions concerning injuries caused when horses became frightened by the sight, sounds, and odors of early steam- and gasoline-powered “horseless carriages.” In Nason v. West (1900) 31 Misc. 583 [65 N.Y.S. 651], the defendant drove his steam-propelled motor carriage near the plaintiff’s horse, which bolted, causing damage to the plaintiff’s horse-drawn carriage. The court reversed judgment for the plaintiff on the ground that absent “proof of an unusual amount of vapor escaping at the time of the accident, [or] any amount of noise greater than is ordinarily heard in running a machine of that character” (id. at p. 653), the plaintiff failed to establish a breach of duty by the defendant. The court explained: “[T]he mere fact that a horse takes fright at some vehicle run by new and improved methods, and smashes things, does not give the injured party a cause of action ... HO ... in the absence of evidence that, at the particular time complained of, the carriage was operated carelessly.” (Id. at p. 652.) The court concluded by articulating the public policy rationale behind its determination that the defendant had breached no duty of care: “The temporary inconvenience and dangers incident to the introduction of these modem and practical modes of travel upon the highway must be subordinate to the larger and permanent benefits to the general public, resulting from adoption of the improvements which science and inventive skill have perfected.” (Id. at p. 653.)

The courts have applied the same general “no breach of duty” rule (for injury caused by the fright of horses) to the necessary and usual attributes of other beneficial machines or devices. For example, in Simonds v. Maine Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1908) 104 Me. 440 [72 A. 175], the defendant telephone company was in the process of erecting poles and stringing telephone wire, and for that purpose placed a large stationary wooden reel of bright telephone cable at the side of a city street. A passing horse bolted at the mere sight of the spooled cable and an accompanying lead pipe and caused injury to its rider. The court observed that the reel and pipe “were of such appearance as would be likely to frighten well-broken horses unaccustomed to them” (id. at p. 176), but rejected the plaintiff’s contention that the mere presence of the reel and pipe on the street established the defendant’s liability for his injuries. The court reasoned that because the defendant had the right “to erect and maintain its poles and string on them its wires and cables where it did in the street, the [defendant] had the concomitant right to use suitable appliances therefor and in reasonably needful places. . . . [