Facts
- Jessie Alexander drove a dump truck that weighed more than five tons.
- Alexander parked the dump truck on a residential street.
- A city ordinance prohibited parking vehicles weighing more than five tons on a residential street.
- Later that evening, Pamela Ross was a passenger in a car that collided with Alexander’s parked truck.
- Ross suffered facial and dental injuries.
- Ross sued Alexander, alleging negligence per se based on Alexander’s violation of the overweight-vehicle parking ordinance.
- Alexander moved to exclude any reference to the ordinance, arguing Ross was not within the class of persons the ordinance was designed to protect.
- The trial court granted the motion, excluded the ordinance, and then granted summary judgment for Alexander.
- Ross appealed.
Issues
- Whether violation of a city ordinance prohibiting parking vehicles over five tons on residential streets may support a negligence per se theory for injuries suffered by a passenger whose car collided with the illegally parked truck.
- Whether the trial court erred by excluding the ordinance and granting summary judgment on the ground that Ross was not within the class of persons, or did not suffer the type of harm, the ordinance was intended to protect against.
Decision
- The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the ordinance was not properly excluded as irrelevant to Ross’s negligence claim.
- The court concluded that users of residential streets, including motorists and their passengers, can fall within the class the ordinance sought to protect, and collision-related injuries are among the harms the ordinance sought to prevent.
- Because the ordinance could support Ross’s negligence-per-se theory (or at least serve as evidence of negligence), summary judgment was improper.
Legal Principles
- A statutory or ordinance violation supports negligence per se (or prima facie negligence) only when the plaintiff is among the persons the enactment was intended to protect and the injury is the kind the enactment was intended to prevent.
- In identifying the ordinance’s protected class and protected harms, courts examine the ordinance’s language and the hazards naturally associated with the prohibited conduct.
- Ordinances restricting where overweight trucks may be parked on residential streets can be construed as safety measures for people traveling on those streets, not solely as measures to protect pavement or neighborhood convenience.
- When a reasonable reading of an ordinance supports the conclusion that it was designed to protect travelers from the danger posed by illegally parked, overweight vehicles, the ordinance and its violation should not be categorically withheld from the factfinder.
- Summary judgment is inappropriate when exclusion of an ordinance removes a viable theory of breach and factual questions remain about negligence and causation.
Conclusion
Ross held that a city ordinance banning parking of vehicles over five tons on residential streets could apply to protect street users such as motorists and passengers from collision-related injuries, so the trial court erred in excluding the ordinance and granting summary judgment for the truck owner; the case was reversed and remanded.