Opinion
A-2224-21
06-13-2023
NANCY VALDEZ and LEODEGARIO VALDEZ, her husband, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNION CITY PARKING AUTHORITY, Defendant-Respondent.
Seigel Law LLC, attorneys for appellants (James P. Kimball, of counsel and on the brief). Cleary, Giacobbe, Alfieri & Jacobs LLC, attorneys for respondent Union City Parking Authority (Anthony P. Seijas, of counsel and on the brief; Jessica V. Henry, on the brief).
This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court." Although it is posted on the internet, this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited. R. 1:36-3.
Submitted May 15, 2023
On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Hudson County, Docket No. L-4161-19.
Seigel Law LLC, attorneys for appellants (James P. Kimball, of counsel and on the brief).
Cleary, Giacobbe, Alfieri & Jacobs LLC, attorneys for respondent Union City Parking Authority (Anthony P. Seijas, of counsel and on the brief; Jessica V. Henry, on the brief).
Before Judges DeAlmeida and Mitterhoff.
PER CURIAM
Plaintiffs Nancy Valdez and Leodegario Valdez appeal from the February 11, 2022 order of the Law Division granting summary judgment in favor of defendant Union City Parking Authority (UCPA) in this slip and fall matter. We affirm.
I.
The following facts are uncontested and presented in the light most favorable to plaintiffs. UCPA, a public entity, owns a multi-story parking garage in Union City. On December 11, 2017, Nancy was at the garage to renew her residential parking pass. Two days earlier, a snowstorm left about four inches of snow on the ground. UCPA employees remediated snow and ice at the garage after the storm. On the top floor, where the UCPA administrative offices are located, the employees piled snow on the sloped deck uphill from the incident site. Nancy parked her car on the street and took an elevator to the top floor offices.
Because the plaintiffs share a surname, we refer to them by their first names to avoid confusion. No disrespect is intended.
In the days after the storm, the sunlight and fluctuations in temperatures created melt/freeze conditions. Because the top floor of the garage has no roof, snow piled by the UCPA employees melted and the resulting water subsequently froze.
At approximately 8:30 a.m., after Nancy renewed her parking pass, she left the offices and walked along the top floor downhill parking ramp intending to exit the garage. As she walked, Nancy slipped on ice, fell, and suffered physical injuries.
Plaintiffs thereafter filed a complaint in the Law Division alleging that Nancy's injuries were caused by UCPA's negligence, carelessness, and palpably unreasonable conduct that resulted in a dangerous condition at the parking garage. Leodegario alleged deprivation of Nancy's services, and a loss of consortium.
After discovery, UCPA moved for summary judgment on all counts in the complaint, arguing that plaintiffs' claims were barred by the common law immunity from liability for injuries resulting from snow removal by a public entity.
On February 11, 2022, the trial court issued a written opinion granting the motion. The court applied our holding in Lathers v. Twp. of W. Windsor, 308 N.J.Super. 301 (App. Div. 1998), and declined plaintiffs' request to extend to public parking authorities the exception from common law snow removal immunity established for public housing authorities in Bligen v. Jersey City Hous. Auth., 131 N.J. 124 (1993). A February 11, 2022 order memorializes the court's opinion.
This appeal follows. Plaintiffs argues that we should extend the exception to immunity established in Bligen to the facts present here.
II.
We review the trial court's decision granting summary judgment de novo, using "the same standard that governs trial courts in reviewing summary judgment orders." Prudential Prop. &Cas. Ins. Co. v. Boylan, 307 N.J.Super. 162, 167 (App. Div. 1998). Rule 4:46-2(c) provides that a court should grant summary judgment 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 challenged and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment or order as a matter of law." "Thus, the movant must show that there does not exist a 'genuine issue' as to a material fact and not simply one 'of an insubstantial nature'; a non-movant will be unsuccessful 'merely by pointing to any fact in dispute.'" Prudential, 307 N.J.Super. at 167. We review the record "based on our consideration of the evidence in the light most favorable to the parties opposing summary judgment." Brill v. Guardian Life Ins. Co., 142 N.J. 520, 523-24 (1995).
We have carefully reviewed the record and find no basis on which to disturb the trial court's grant of summary judgment. We are guided in our analysis by our holding in Lathers, where we rejected arguments substantively similar to those raised here. In that case, Lather fell on a patch of ice on a sidewalk leading from a municipal building complex to a parking lot. 308 N.J.Super. at 303. "Apparently, snow had been removed from the sidewalk at an earlier time and piled adjacent to the walk. The claim was that the snow melted onto the sidewalk and froze." Ibid. The township moved for summary judgment claiming immunity. Ibid. The trial court granted the motion and we affirmed. Ibid.
In doing so, we explained
Prior to the Tort Claims Act, [N.J.S.A. 59:1-1 to 1310], our courts recognized a common law immunity stemming from negligence in the removal of snow from public property. The common law immunity was established in Miehl v. Darpino, 53 N.J. 49 (1968)[,] and survived the passage of the Tort Claims Act. [Rochinsky v. State, Dep't of Transp., 110 N.J. 399, 411-14 (1988)]. Indeed, the Supreme Court considers "the common-law immunity for the snow-removal activities of public entities to be among the most significant immunities recognized by judicial decision
prior to the adoption of the Act." Id. at 414. That is so because
[n]o matter how effective an entity's snowremoval activities may be, a multitude of claims could be filed after every snowstorm. We can conceive of no other governmental function that would expose public entities to more litigation if this immunity were to be abrogated.
[Id. at 413.]
[Lathers, 308 N.J.Super. at 304.]
We noted the rationale for the immunity:
If liability were to be imposed on a public entity for injuries caused by its snow removal, it would be required to "broom sweep" the areas from which it removed snow. Miehl, 53 N.J. at 53. Further, "[t]he high costs of such an undertaking could make the expense of any extensive program of snow removal prohibitive and could result in no program or in an inadequate partial program." Id. at 54. Therefore, since "[t]he public is greatly benefitted even by snow removal which does not attain the acme of perfection of 'broom swept streets," a public entity will not be held liable for injuries arising from its snow removal activities. Ibid.
[Ibid.]
Applying the immunity to the facts of Lathers, we concluded that "the municipal employees shoveled the sidewalk but, under plaintiff's theory, were negligent in not preventing melting snow from running onto the adjacent sidewalk and refreezing, or removing it once it accumulated there. In our view, this is the type of activity that the Miehl Court specifically intended to immunize." Id. at 304 (citing Miehl, 53 N.J. at 53-54; Farias v. Twp. of Westfield, 297 N.J.Super. 395 (App. Div. 1997) (applying common law snow removal immunity to ice patches on a public sidewalk)).
The negligence alleged in Lathers mirrors the negligence alleged by plaintiffs. Thus, the trial court did not err when it concluded that UCPA is immune from plaintiffs' claims for damages.
In Lathers, the plaintiff argued that the exception to common law snow removal immunity established in Bligen should be extended:
In Bligen, the plaintiff, who lived in a complex owned by the Jersey City Housing Authority, slipped on ice and fell as she stepped off the curb into the parking lot of the complex. [131 N.J. at 126-27.] The Supreme Court declined to extend common law snow removal immunity to the Housing Authority. Plaintiff contends that the rationale of the Bligen decision is found in the fact that the fall in that case occurred on a sidewalk owned and maintained by the entity, that it employed a crew for snow removal, and that the Housing Authority had a "finite area" from which to remove snow. Id. at 37. Because those facts are also common to the case under consideration, plaintiff reasons that the Bligen rule should apply here.
[Id. at 305.]
We rejected this argument:
We disagree with plaintiff that the Bligen decision turned on those factors. Rather, we view Bligen as a narrow exception to the snow removal immunity established by Miehl and Rochinsky. Our interpretation of Bligen is supported by a recent opinion of this court. Rossi v. Borough of Haddonfield, 297 N.J.Super. 494 (App. Div.), affd o.b., 152 N.J. 43 (1997). In Rossi, the plaintiff fell in a municipal parking lot that had been sanded a few days before her fall but, nonetheless, contained patches of ice on the day of the accident. Plaintiff paid for a permit to park in the lot and claimed that, because the accident happened on a parking lot rather than a street, and because she paid for a parking permit, her status was like that of the plaintiff in Bligen. This court rejected that argument and applied common law immunity to the public entity's allegedly negligent snow removal activity. Id. at 501-02.
[Id. at 305-06.]
We noted that "[t]he essence of the Bligen opinion is found in the following passage." Id. at 306.
The common-law immunity for snow-removal activity . . . did not apply to public housing authorities because under the common-law, public housing authorities were deemed to owe the same standard of care to their tenants as did other commercial landlords.
[Bligen, 131 N.J. at 134.]
We continued,
The Bligen Court was aware of the Legislature's admonition that courts should not accept "novel causes
of action." Ibid. (quoting Comment to N.J.S.A. 59:2 1). Thus, the Court made it clear that it was simply following "the long tradition in common law of holding municipal landlords responsible for the reasonably-foreseeable consequences of their actions." Ibid. Because there was no landlord-tenant relationship established in Rossi, immunity applied. That rationale applies more forcefully under the facts of this case. To recognize plaintiff's cause of action would be to accept a novel cause of action not heretofore recognized in this State.
[Id. at 306.]
Our rationale in Lathers for not extending Bligen applies here. A public parking authority is not the equivalent of a public housing authority. There is no long-standing tradition holding public parking authorities to the same standard as commercial entities. We see no compelling reason to depart from the Legislature's direction to avoid recognizing novel causes of action against public entities. Absent a contrary holding by the Supreme Court, we decline to extend its holding in Bligen to claims raised against any entity other than a public housing authority. See Tymczyszyn v. Columbus Garden, 422 N.J.Super. 253 (App. Div. 2011) (extending the holding in Bligen to permit claims by a non-tenant against a public housing authority for negligence in clearing snow and ice from a sidewalk abutting its multi-unit public housing property).
Notably, in a concurring opinion in Lathers, Judge Dreier, while agreeing that the township enjoyed common law snow removal immunity, urged the Supreme Court to review its holding in Bligen and "declare that sidewalk ice or snow hazards" on all public property "be treated as any other dangerous condition under the Tort Claims Act." 308 N.J.Super. at 307-08 (Dreier, P.J.A.D., concurring). The Supreme Court denied certification in Lathers, 154 N.J. 609 (1998), and in the twenty-five years since Judge Dreier issued his concurrence the Supreme Court has not extended the exception established in Bligen to all public property.
To the extent we have not specifically addressed any of plaintiffs' remaining claims, we conclude they lack sufficient merit to warrant discussion in a written opinion. R. 2:11-3(e)(1)(E).
Affirmed.