Facts
- Fox Hill Village Homeowners Corporation leased and operated a retirement community in Westwood, Massachusetts, with contractual responsibility for maintenance.
- The lease required the tenant to “promptly remove snow and ice from all driveways and walkways.”
- Patricia Anderson worked at Clark House, a skilled nursing facility located on the leased premises.
- On December 9, 1990, Anderson slipped on a patch of ice in the Clark House parking lot while exiting her car and was injured.
- Fox Hill had not removed the ice before that morning.
- Anderson sued Fox Hill for damages, alleging (1) breach of the lease as an intended third-party beneficiary and (2) tort liability based on an assumed duty to remove snow and ice more promptly than tort law otherwise required.
- The Superior Court granted summary judgment for Fox Hill, and Anderson appealed.
Issues
- Whether the lease’s snow-and-ice removal clause made Anderson an intended third-party beneficiary entitled to sue for breach.
- Whether the lease clause imposed on Fox Hill a tort duty to Anderson greater than ordinary tort principles, such that failure to remove natural accumulations of ice could support negligence liability.
Decision
- The court affirmed summary judgment for Fox Hill.
- Anderson was not an intended third-party beneficiary of the lease’s maintenance and snow-removal provisions.
- The lease clause did not create a heightened tort duty to Anderson; absent a separate tort duty, nonperformance of a contractual promise did not constitute a tort.
- Under then-controlling Massachusetts law, there was generally no duty to remove natural accumulations of snow and ice; the ice condition therefore did not establish tort liability on these facts.
Legal Principles
- A nonparty may recover as a third-party beneficiary only if the contracting parties clearly and definitely intended to confer on that person the benefit of the promised performance, as shown by the contract language and surrounding circumstances.
- Contractual allocation of maintenance responsibilities between contracting parties does not, without more, create enforceable rights in nonparties or enlarge tort duties owed to them.
- Failure to perform a contractual duty is not a tort absent an independent duty to act apart from the contractual promise.
- Under Massachusetts premises-liability doctrine at the time, landowners/occupiers generally had no duty to remove natural accumulations of snow or ice.
Conclusion
The court held that an employee injured by ice on leased premises could not enforce a tenant’s lease promise to remove snow and ice without clear intent to benefit her, and that the promise did not create an independent or heightened tort duty where Massachusetts law did not otherwise impose liability for natural accumulations.