Whether a claim sounded in premises liability or ordinary negligence; Wilson v BRK, Inc; Bowman v Walker; Duty; Kandil-Elsayed v F & E Oil Co; Bertrand v Alan Ford, Inc; Maurer v Oakland Cnty Parks & Recreation Dep’t; Causation

The court held that the trial court appropriately treated plaintiff’s claim against defendant-Jones Lang LaSalle Americas as sounding in premises liability, not ordinary negligence, and correctly granted it summary disposition under MCR 2.116(C)(10). It also held that his claim against defendant-Scott Wesney Construction failed because he could not establish duty or causation. Thus, it affirmed summary disposition for both of them. As to Jones, given that it could not “possibly be characterized as an owner, possessor, or occupier of the premises where plaintiff fell and injured himself,” summary disposition was proper if his claim against it sounded in premises liability. The court concluded that here, as in Wilson, “plaintiff’s ‘lawsuit ultimately concerns an injury arising from an allegedly dangerous condition on the land, i.e., a step that must be navigated . . . in order to enter and exit’ the premises. [He] had to step up from the parking lot onto the curb and sidewalk to enter the Chase bank, and then he had to step down from the sidewalk and curb onto the parking lot surface to return to his vehicle. The step up and the subsequent step down involved encountering what [he] described in his complaint as a dangerous condition on the premises, which turned his claim against Jones into one that sounded in premises liability[.]” In addition, while “Jones was involved in the construction project, [it] completed that work in 2018. Plaintiff fell in the parking lot” nearly three years later. Jones was properly granted summary disposition because it “had no continuing involvement with the Chase premises after the final inspection occurred” in 2018, and plaintiff had “no evidence that his fall was traceable to anything involving Jones other than the allegedly dangerous condition on the premises[.]” As to Wesney, as the Michigan Supreme Court put it in Maurer, “‘[b]ecause the plaintiff has not presented any facts that the step posed an unreasonable risk of harm, the trial court properly granted summary disposition.’ Faithfully applying that logic,” the court found “Wesney was entitled to summary disposition under MCR 2.116(C)(10) because it owed no duty to plaintiff.” Further, as to causation, “plaintiff acquired notice of the step when he walked into the bank. Simply looking where he was going when he left the bank would have prevented him from losing his footing because he admitted that he walked toward the parking lot without looking down.”