Morrison Mahoney Associate Olivia Collins recently obtained a dismissal on behalf of our client, the largest construction rental equipment company in the world.
The case arose out of a motor vehicle accident on a public roadway between plaintiff and a co-defendant, where the co-defendant was operating a front-end loader he had just rented from our client. The co-defendant was attempting to turn left from our client’s business driveway into the northbound lane of traffic. Plaintiff was traveling in the southbound lane and collided with the front-end loader. Plaintiff sued our client alleging that it had a duty to warn visitors of the dangers of taking a left turn out of its driveway. We moved to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) and argued that our client had no obligation to assume a duty with regard to a public roadway, and requiring private entities to do so would be contrary to public policy.
In his opposition, plaintiff argued that our client had an affirmative duty not to create hazards in the roadway. Plaintiff also pointed to the “mode of operation” doctrine detailed in Bowers v. P. Wiles, Inc., 475 Mass. 24 (2016), which he argued relieves a plaintiff from the burden of proving a property owner’s actual or constructive notice of a dangerous condition when the operation of the business would make such risks foreseeable. Plaintiff argued that since our client is in the business of renting out heavy machinery, including the front-end loader rented to the co-defendant, it had notice that operators of such vehicles may attempt to make a dangerous left-hand turn when leaving its premises.
The Court allowed our client’s Motion to Dismiss, holding that the duty to warn related to dangers on the owner’s property, and not those pertaining to an adjacent public highway. The Court further stated that “[s]uch roadways present a well understood challenge to vehicle operators, whether of an ordinary motor vehicle or some more cumbersome conveyance like a tractor trailer or front-end loader, of safely negotiating a lefthand turn from adjacent business premises.”
The Court distinguished the matter at hand from Bowers, stating that the “mode of operation” doctrine applies to reasonably foreseeable dangers on an owner’s property, therefore the doctrine was adopted for wholly different circumstances than the present case.
