Wrongful death; Common-law negligence claim; Duty to rescue; Special relationships giving rise to a duty to aid or protect another from foreseeable harm; Williams v Cunningham Drug Stores, Inc; Murdock v Higgins; Comparing Farwell v Keaton; Foreseeability; Personal representative (PR)

On remand from the Supreme Court, the court held that the trial court erred in dismissing plaintiff-PR’s negligence claim because she raised questions of fact to support it. She sued defendant for the decedent’s “wrongful death based on negligence and premises liability.” The Supreme Court remanded the case to the court “with directions ‘to consider whether plaintiff’s negligence claim based on failure to rescue was separate and distinct from the pleaded premises liability claim.’” The court concluded on remand that plaintiff “alleged negligence separately from the premises-liability claim. For purposes of the negligence claim, the injury arose, allegedly, out of defendant’s conduct in inviting the decedent to his property for counseling and failing to respond properly to the circumstances presented, unrelated to [his] duty as an owner, possessor, or occupier of the property.” It further determined that “there was [a] question of fact about whether defendant had a duty to rescue in this situation.” Plaintiff asserted that “defendant and the decedent had a special relationship to support defendant’s duty.” She argued that this case was “factually analogous to Farwell” and the court agreed. “Likewise, in this case, plaintiff has raised a genuine question of fact about whether defendant should have sought assistance for the decedent. [He] invited the decedent to his remote property, and [she] wanted to talk with him about her struggles. After [she] became upset, defendant told her to leave. Plaintiff argues that the decedent was in her right mind when she arrived at defendant’s home, but his spiritual counseling was disturbing to her, which resulted in the decedent ‘flee[ing] whereupon she became tangled in heavy brush, in a swamp, on a dark cold night.’ Defendant admittedly saw [her] standing in swamp water while emotionally distressed, with nobody else around who could have helped.” The court also found there was “a genuine question of material fact about whether the risk was foreseeable. Defendant knew that the decedent could not walk out of the property and that she was in mental distress, and he did not contact anyone to help her. The burden on him was minimal compared to the risk faced by the decedent, who was in swamp water, in the dark, on a property with which she was unfamiliar.” Reversed and remanded.