Perrone v. Rose City Hma, Inc.

GRACE PERRONE AND JULIO PERRONE,AN INCAPACITATED PERSON,BY ERIC PERRONE, HIS GUARDIAN, Appellants v. ROSE CITY HMA, INC., T/D/B/ALANCASTER REGIONAL MEDICALCENTER, HEALTH MANAGEMENTASSOCIATES, INC. D/B/A LANCASTERREGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER,HOSPITAL HOUSEKEEPING SYSTEMS,LTD, AND HOSPITAL HOUSEKEEPING SYSTEMS, LLC, Appellees

J.A22037/14

No. 1838 MDA 2013

SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

APRIL 10, 2015

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

Appeal from the Order Entered September 11, 2013

In the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County

Civil Division No(s).: CI-11-14933

BEFORE: PANELLA, SHOGAN, and FITZGERALD,^* JJ.

MEMORANDUM BY FITZGERALD, J.:

In this slip-and-fall case, Plaintiffs/Appellants Grace Perrone ("Appellant"¹) and her husband Julio Perrone, an incapacitated person by his guardian, Eric Perrone, appeal from the order granting summary judgment in favor of Defendants/Appellees, Rose City HMA, Inc., T/D/B/A LancasterRegional Medical Center ("LRMC"), Health Management Associates, Inc. D/B/A Lancaster Regional Medical Center ("HMA"), Hospital Housekeeping Systems, Ltd., and Hospital Housekeeping Systems, LLC (the latter two collectively, "HHS"). Appellants raise five issues for our review:² four pertain to the trial court's findings that they failed to establish Appellees' floor-cleaning machine leaked the water which caused Appellant's fall and the fifth is a challenge to the court's exclusion of evidence on hearsay grounds. After careful review, we reverse the granting of summary judgment to Appellees LRMC and HHS. With respect to Appellee HMA, we vacate the award of summary judgment such that HMA may pursue its vicarious liability claim.

Appellant Julio was a patient at Appellee LRMC's hospital, and Appellant Grace was visiting him. "The parties agree that [Appellant] was a business invitee of" LRMC. Trial Ct. Op., 9/11/13, at 5. LRMC had an agreement with Appellee HHS for HHS to provide housekeeping services, which included cleaning and maintaining the elevators. LRMC owns cleaning machines, and both LRMC and HHS are responsible for maintaining them. Id. at 7.

On January 27, 2010, Appellant's sister, Ida Geib ("Sister"), arrived at the hospital to visit. Sister entered an elevator, along with two men inuniform and a floor-washing machine. LRMC employee Linda Brown testified that the hospital has six floors, consisting of a ground floor and five numbered floors.³ Sister disembarked on the third floor while the two men stayed on the elevator. Shortly thereafter, Sister and Appellant returned to the elevator together to leave the hospital; as we discuss infra, the length of time that Sister was away from the elevator is an issue in this appeal. The same elevator returned and there was no one in it. When Appellant entered the elevator, she slipped on water on the floor, fell, and sustained injuries. Two LRMC employees, Linda Brown and Ellen Poshefko, cleaned up the water and transported Appellant to the emergency room in the same elevator with a wheelchair.

On December 16, 2011, Appellants initiated this case by filing a writ of summons. On April 13, 2012, they filed a complaint, raising claims of negligence, and Appellant Julio raised a claim of loss of consortium claim. The parties conducted discovery, including depositions of the following individuals: Appellant, Sister, Brown, Poshefko, William Street, an HHS director who supervises HHS employees at LRMC, and Sheldon Cash, a regional vice president of HHS.

On July 2, 2013, all three Appellees filed separate motions for summary judgment, averring Appellants failed to produce sufficient evidencethat the water on the elevator floor came from LRMC's machine or that they knew or should have known there was water on the floor. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of all Appellees on September 11, 2013. Appellants filed a motion for reconsideration, but before the trial court ruled on it, they took this timely appeal on October 10th.⁴

At this juncture we summarize the trial court's findings as follows. See Trial Ct. Op., 9/11/13, at 8-13. Sister "was unable to estimate how much time had elapsed [from] when she got off the elevator and when she and [Appellant] got back . . . , or say whether anyone else had gotten on the elevator in her absence." Id. at 8. "No issues were reported to . . . HHS or [LRMC] regarding moving the scrubbing machines on the elevator and the scrubbers were not known to leak; however, [HHS director] Street and [HHS vice president] Cash acknowledged that water leaking from the machines was a possibility." Id. (emphasis added).

The court also considered LRMC employee Poshefko's testimony thatshe recalled that in the past, she observed "water come from a cleaning machine," but HHS employees "immediately wiped it up with a towel." Id. Initially, Poshefko stated she saw this occur on

an unspecified number of times both before and after [Appellant's] fall, but then she testified seeing it happen only once. However, Ms. Poshefko was unsure of whether the incident she recalled occurred before or after [Appellant's] fall. Viewing her testimony in the light most favorable to [Appellants] as the non-moving parties, Ms. Poshefko saw water coming from [LRMC's] cleaning machines several times, but she also specifically recalled seeing . . . HHS's employees wipe up the water immediately.

Id. at 8-9. The court found Poshefko's statement that "a very small amount of water was left by a machine being transported" did "not support a reasonable inference that in this specific instance, a large quantity of water leaked from a scrubbing machine." Id. at 11.

The trial court further reasoned as follows. LRMC "initiated an investigation and was unable to locate any evidence of prior slips and falls on liquids in elevators and no representatives or employees of [LRMC] or . . . HHS were aware of leaks from cleaning equipment. In the case of spills on the floor, . . . HHS's policy was to immediately wipe it up with a towel and put down a 'wet floor' sign." Id. at 9. Citing the depositions of HHS supervisor Street, LRMC employee Brown, and LRMC chief operating officer Deborah Willwerth, the court stated the "elevator is open to the public, and there are numerous possible sources of the water, including other hospital equipment, flowers, spilled drinks, and snow and ice tracked in fromoutside."⁵ Id.

The court also found:

None of [Appellees'] employees saw the accident happen, and there is no evidence any employee knew of the water on the floor until [Appellant] fell. . . . HHS's policy was to put up a 'wet floor' sign in the case of a spill, but no witness testified seeing one the in the elevator on the date of the incident.

The scrubbing machines, which were the only machines at LRMC that used water, were functioning normally on the day of the incident. No agent or employee of any [Appellee] was aware of problems with the machines leaking. Only Ms. Poshefko recalled seeing the cleaning machines leave a 'very small' amount of water on the floor on some occasions, but . . . HHS's employees wiped it up immediately after moving the machine.

Id. at 10.

The court concluded Appellants failed to cite sufficient evidence that Appellees "caused the water to be on the floor of the elevator," and that such a conclusion would "require[ ] building inference upon inference." Id. However, it also stated, "While it is certainly possible that the water in the quantity found in the elevator came from one of [LRMC's] machines, such a conclusion would require the jury to speculate." Id. at 11. The court reiterated that "[t]he source of the water was never determined, and there was no evidence it came from any of [LRMC's] machines, which according to the maintenance logs, were both functioning properly." Id. at 10; see also id. at 7 ("No problems were reported in the logs on the day of the incident,indicating that the two scrubbers were functioning normally.").

We now consider the relevant standard of review and general principles for summary judgment. "The Superior Court may overturn a trial court's entry of summary judgment only if there has been an error of law or a clear abuse of discretion." Estate of Swift v. Ne. Hosp. of Phila., 690 A.2d 719, 721-22 (Pa. Super. 1997) (citations omitted). Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 1035.2 provides in pertinent part:

After the relevant pleadings are closed . . . any party may move for summary judgment in whole or in part as a matter of law

* * *

(2) if, after the completion of discovery relevant to the motion, including the production of expert reports, an adverse party who will bear the burden of proof at trial has failed to produce evidence of facts essential to the cause of action which in a jury trial would require the issues to be submitted to a jury.

Pa.R.C.P. 1035.2(2).

This Court has stated:

Summary judgment is properly granted when the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The judgment may . . . be granted [only] in cases that are clear and free from doubt. A reviewing court must examine the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, accepting as true all well-pled facts and giving that party the benefit of all reasonable inferences drawn from those facts. . . .

. . . Pennsylvania law places the burden on the plaintiff toestablish the existence of negligence on the part of the defendant by proving four elements: (1) a duty or obligation recognized by law; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) a causal connection between the conduct and the resulting injury; and (4) actual damages. . . .

Estate of Swift, 690 A.2d at 721-22 (citations omitted).

"A business visitor is a person who is invited to enter or remain on land for a purpose directly or indirectly connected with business dealings with the possessor of...