Illinois Appellate Court Rejects Building Manager and Elevator Company’s Arguments That They Had No Duty to Upgrade Their Elevators With the Latest Safety Equipment

In Greenhill v. Reit Mgm’t & Research, LLC (2019 IL App (1^st) 181164), the First District reversed the trial court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of two defendants in a construction accident lawsuit, finding that the defendants and the trial court improperly defined the scope of their duty of care too narrowly and conflated the concepts of duty and breach.

The lawsuit arose out of an incident involving a freight elevator at a construction site. The plaintiff and his coworker were riding the freight elevator with an unrelated worker from a separate contractor, when the plaintiff and his coworker mistakenly got off on the wrong floor. The plaintiff and his coworker tried to get back on the elevator, but the unrelated worker did not notice and pressed the button to close the elevator. The gate on the elevator (which moved up and down from the ceiling) came down as the plaintiff was entering the doorway and hit him on the head.

The Plaintiff sued the manager of the building, as well as the elevator maintenance company, alleging that they negligently failed to install adequate safety mechanisms to prevent the elevator gate from closing while someone was standing in the doorway. The plaintiff relied on the witnesses’ conflicting testimony regarding whether the elevator’s audible alarm for a closing gate was functioning at the time of the occurrence. The plaintiff also emphasized two prior incidents involving freight elevators at the same project, after which the elevator maintenance company installed upgraded sensors in the elevator doorways. The elevator company had requested, and the building manager had approved, installing the upgraded sensor in the subject elevator, but the elevator company had not yet installed it at the time of the occurrence. The elevator company introduced evidence that the subject elevator was equipped with an earlier version of the sensor, but the elevator company acknowledged that the upgraded version was more effective.

The building manager and the elevator company argued that they did not have any duty to install the latest upgrades in their elevators, that the hazard of the closing gate was open and obvious, and that the worker who pressed the close button was the sole proximate cause of the occurrence. The trial court agreed with the defendants on the issue of duty and granted summary judgment in their favor.

Regarding duty of care, the appellate court found that the trial court and the defendants improperly framed the question as whether the defendants had a duty to install the latest upgrades. The appellate court explained that the defendants improperly conflated duty and breach. Rather, the court explained that the defendants had a duty to exercise reasonable care as a matter of law, and whether the defendants breached that duty in particular by failing to install the upgraded sensor was a question of fact for the jury.

Regarding the open and obvious defense, the appellate court found that there were questions of fact regarding whether the hazard was obvious. Notably, the court explained that the hazard was not simply the closing gate, but the fact that the Plaintiff did not know that the unrelated worker inside the elevator had pressed the close button.

Regarding proximate cause, court rejected the defendants’ argument that the man who pressed the close button was the sole proximate cause of the occurrence. The court found there were questions of fact regarding whether the audible alarm was functioning and whether a functioning alarm or the upgraded sensor could have prevented the occurrence.

Greenhill v. Reit Mgm’t & Research, LLC, 2019 IL App (1^st) 181164