Rodriguez v. Del Sol
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In consolidated cases, a truck crashed through the front glass of the Concentra Medical Clinic in the Del Sol Shopping Center, killing three people and seriously injuring several others. Both groups of Plaintiffs sued Del Sol’s owners and operators, alleging that Del Sol negligently contributed to the accident by, among other things, failing to adequately post signage; failing to install speed bumps; failing to erect barriers that would have protected buildings, employees, and visitors from errant vehicles; or failing to use other traffic control methods in the parking lot. Both district courts granted summary judgment and found that this accident “was not foreseeable” as a matter of law, and therefore found that no duty existed. On appeal, the Court of Appeals consolidated the two cases and affirmed the district courts’ common ruling on summary judgment that Defendants “had no duty to protect Plaintiffs inside the building from criminally reckless drivers.” The Court of Appeals rejected the foreseeability-driven duty analysis relied upon by the district courts, stating that it was affirming both cases based on a “policy-driven duty analysis advanced by the Restatement (Third) of Torts . . . and recently embraced by our New Mexico Supreme Court." By this opinion, the Supreme Court took the opportunity of this opinion to explain why foreseeability should not be considered when determining duty, both generally and when considering the analysis of the Court of Appeals in these cases. The Court overruled prior cases insofar as they conflicted with this opinion’s clarification of the appropriate duty analysis in New Mexico. And because the Court concluded that the Court of Appeals analysis was a no-breach-of-duty analysis more than a policy-driven duty analysis, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals. "We reaffirm our adoption of Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm Section 7 comment j (2010), and require courts to articulate specific policy reasons, unrelated to foreseeability considerations, if deciding that a defendant does not have a duty or that an existing duty should be limited. . . . We do not hold that courts may never consider foreseeability; however, when a court does so, it is to analyze no-breach-of-duty or no-legal-cause as a matter of law, not whether a duty exists."
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