Hotel operator not liable for showerhead malfunction under res ipsa loquitur theory
The Second District, Division Eight has affirmed a grant of summary judgment by the Hon. Jill Feeney, Judge Presiding, of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. (Howard v. Accor Management (April 3, 2024) B320603.) The plaintiff alleged two theories of negligence, claiming that:
As Monique Howard went to shower during her hotel stay, the handheld shower head fell apart. Howard cut herself and fell. Later she sued the hotel for negligence and premises liability. The trial court granted summary judgment. We affirm because Howard failed to mount a triable issue of material fact on the key issue of notice and failed to establish the applicability of a venerable but inapt doctrine—res ipsa loquitur. (Id., pp. 1-2.)
Specifically, plaintiff alleged the shower head malfunctioned not after she used it in the morning but after she did so later in the day, and thus only after her hotel room had been cleaned, and that on this second use the shower head fell apart:
As soon as I stepped in the shower and turned the water on I noticed that it was spraying me in the face, which was a little odd for me because I had took a shower earlier that day. I was -- kind surprised me, plus I had full makeup on. It was spraying me in my face. When that happened I went to take the shower off of the shower handle and that is when it just dismantled and fell apart.” (Id., p. 2)
Defendant Accor moved for summary judgment, which the trial court granted. The appellate court affirmed, finding plaintiff had not shown there was a triable issue as to the issue of whether the hotel had any notice of the defect in the shower head as plaintiff could not show either actual or constructive notice.
The appellate court also found that plaintiff could not show the doctrine of "res ipsa loquitur," Latin for "the thing speaks of itself," applied. This doctrine may be used to show the negligence of the defendant from the factual scenario, i.e., that it was "more likely than not" defendant was negligent, without the need to provide more specifics as to what the defendant actually did that breached the standard of care. The Second District rejected this argument, noting the plaintiff had not proven the elements of the doctrine because, inter alia, the trial court had sustained objections to the proferred testimony of the plaintiff's safety expert, Brad Avrit, on the grounds his statements involved improper legal opinion.
Importantly, the court noted res ipsa did not apply because the facts did not show it was more likely the defendant's negligence, as opposed to some other cause, caused the injury:
Howard’s papers ask us to make many leaps of logic to infer it was more likely than not that the housekeeper’s negligence caused the shower wand to break. [Citation.] Howard’s deposition testimony leads to reasonable inferences the cause was something else: the shower head sprayed Howard because it was facing her, and Howard’s quick reach for the wand or an inherent defect could have caused its dismantling. There is no inconsistency between these causes and Howard’s and her boyfriend’s statements about the care they took with their earlier showers. The evidence does not show the shower wand was broken before Howard grabbed it. When describing the incident at her deposition, Howard did not say the wand was sharp or broken then. Nor does Howard’s declaration say she was cut before the wand fell apart. (Id., pp. 7-8.) |
Conclusion and analysis
The opinion of Justice Wiley affirmed the grant of judgment in favor of hotelier Accor, finding the trial court made no errors of law and that the rulings upon the objections to Mr. Avrit's opinions were well within that court's sound discretion. The key portion of the opinion is the discussion of res ipsa loquitur, which the trial court found was only applicable to show negligence when there was evidence, and not mere speculation, to show that all of its elements applied. These elements, which the Howard court strictly construed, were summarized at pages nine and ten:
. . . [A]s our Supreme Court has explained it, “certain kinds of accidents are so likely to have been caused by the defendant’s negligence that one may fairly say ‘the thing speaks for itself.’ ” (Brown v. Poway Unified School Dist. (1993) 4 Cal.4th 820, 825.) The doctrine has three requirements: (1) the accident was of a kind that ordinarily does not occur absent someone’s negligence; (2) the instrumentality of harm was within the defendant’s exclusive control; (3) the plaintiff did not voluntarily contribute to the harm. (Id. at pp. 825–826 & 836.)
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