Opinion
21-P-1160
12-05-2022
Ronalda CHARLTON v. SEA SCOUT PARTNERS, LLC, & others.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0
Plaintiff Ronalda Charlton brought this negligence action alleging that she was injured while being rescued from a stopped elevator at a hotel in Falmouth. Summary judgments entered in favor of defendants Sea Scout Partners, LLC, and Scout Hotel and Resort Management LLC, which owned and managed the hotel, and defendant Atlantic Elevator South Company, Inc. (Atlantic Elevator), which maintained the elevator. On appeal, Charlton argues that (1) there were genuine issues of material fact regarding the number of people in the elevator, and whether the elevator was ascending or descending; and (2) she was entitled to rely on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur to prove that the reason that the elevator stopped was that it had been negligently maintained. We affirm.
We take the facts from the summary judgment record, construing them in the light most favorable to Charlton. See Bulwer v. Mount Auburn Hosp., 473 Mass. 672, 680 (2016). In early March 2015, Atlantic Elevator, which was contractually responsible for maintaining the elevator, completed an elevator modernization project at the hotel. As part of that project, Thomas Conway from the Massachusetts Department of Safety tested and inspected the elevator, issuing it a passing grade and permitting it to be put into service. After inspecting it, Conway had no concerns about the elevator.
On March 21, 2015, Charlton attended an event at the hotel. Several guests became highly intoxicated and there were multiple fights, causing hotel personnel to call the police and request that the police help "shut down" the event. As the police tried to get the crowd to disperse, Charlton got into the elevator to go up to her room; according to Charlton, there were five or six people in the elevator. The doors opened and closed several times. Then, between the second and third floors of the hotel, the elevator stopped moving.
Other eyewitnesses described the elevator as "packed" and "like a party," with more than ten people inside. As we discuss, the dispute over the number of people in the elevator was not material.
Firefighters were called to the scene to help the occupants who were trapped in the elevator. The firefighters tried to reset the elevator manually but could not do so. Consequently, the firefighters forced open the elevator doors and helped the occupants out of the elevator onto the landing below. Charlton jumped down to the landing and injured her knee.
After the stoppage, elevator mechanic Lawrence Carr put the elevator back into service. He testified at his deposition that the only repairs he had to perform were related to the elevator's having been overloaded and the firefighters’ having damaged a hoistway door.
Carr testified that the elevator stopped moving because it was overloaded. He explained that elevators have a rupture valve that will stop an elevator from moving if the elevator is overloaded and that, here, the rupture valve was triggered, indicating that the elevator was overloaded. Where Charlton has asserted that there were only five or six people in the elevator, we do not rely on Carr's testimony that the elevator stopped moving because it was overloaded. We do, however, rely on his testimony that he did not have to perform any other repairs on the elevator.
On appeal, Charlton points to her deposition testimony that there were only five or six people in the elevator, versus the ten or more that other eyewitnesses reported, and asserts that the elevator was ascending, not descending. Charlton argues that these were genuine issues of material fact and that she was entitled to rely on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur to prove that the elevator would not have stopped moving unless the defendants were negligent. Charlton's arguments fail where nothing in the summary judgment record supported even an inference of negligence.
While Charlton does not elaborate on this argument in her brief, she argued below that there was evidence that a rupture valve will stop an overloaded elevator from descending, but not from ascending.
First, there was no evidence that the defendants knew or should have known of any problems with the elevator or that the defendants were otherwise negligent in owning and maintaining the elevator. Instead, the evidence was that the elevator had just been modernized and inspected, and that neither Conway, who inspected the elevator before the incident, or Carr, who put the elevator back into service afterwards, noted any defects with the elevator.
Second, in the circumstances of this case, Charlton could not have relied on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur to overcome the lack of evidence on negligence. The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur "permits a trier of fact to draw an inference of negligence in the absence of a finding of a specific cause of the occurrence when an accident is of the kind that does not ordinarily happen unless the defendant was negligent in some respect and other responsible causes including conduct of the plaintiff are sufficiently eliminated by the evidence" (citation omitted). Kennedy v. Abramson, 100 Mass. App. Ct. 775, 778 (2022). "The jury must be able to find, either by expert evidence or by their own common knowledge, that the mere occurrence of the accident shows negligence as a cause." Enrich v. Windmere Corp., 416 Mass. 83, 88 (1993). Here, the mechanics of the elevator, and whether it would not have stopped moving unless the defendants were negligent, would have been outside the common knowledge of the jury. There was no expert testimony from which a jury would have been able to draw that inference.
Atlantic Elevator argues that Charlton did not raise the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur below. We need not address whether Charlton has waived the argument.
In this context, the number of people in the elevator and whether it was ascending or descending were not material. Even assuming that there were five people in an ascending elevator, nothing in the summary judgment record supported even an inference of negligence. Summary judgments therefore properly entered in favor of the defendants. See Bulwer, 472 Mass. at 680 (summary judgment is appropriate where there are no genuine issues of material fact and moving party is entitled to judgment as matter of law).
Charlton also argues that the hotel "stranded [its] guests in an elevator for so long that firefighters needed to respond and break open the doors." To the extent Charlton seeks to assert liability against the hotel based on its response to the incident, the argument is insufficiently developed on appeal.
Judgments affirmed.