Earlier this year, the Texas Supreme Court clarified the law on when a property owner can be liable for injuries caused on adjacent property. In HNMC, Inc. v. Chan, a nurse was struck and killed by a driver while crossing the street in front of the hospital where she worked after her shift. A jury found in favor of her estate and apportioned 20% of liability to the hospital. The appellate court affirmed judgment in favor of the nurse’s estate, recognizing a new duty specific to the factual scenario in this case. The Texas Supreme Court disagreed with the appeals court’s interpretation of the law and cautioned that “courts should not attempt to craft case-specific duties when recognized duty rules apply to the factual situation at hand.”[1] The Texas Supreme Court then laid out the existing duty and no-duty rules that should have guided the analysis in this case.
Generally, “a property owner . . . has no duty to ensure the safety of a person who leaves the owner’s property and suffers injury on an adjacent public roadway, or to ensure that person’s safety against the dangerous acts of a third party.”[2] However, there are four circumstances in which a property owner does “owe a duty on premises it does not own or occupy.”[3] The following four duties arise out of other Texas Supreme Court case law:
- Duty owed by a property owner who agrees or otherwise undertakes to make premises safe for others.[4]
- Duty owed by a property owner whose property contains a dangerous condition appurtenant to a public highway.[5]
- Duty owed by a property owner who assumes actual control over adjacent property.[6]
- Duty owed by a property owner who knows of an obscured danger near the entrance or exit of their property.[7]
Ultimately, the court found that the hospital’s only duty arose out of its exercise of control over parts of the county-owned property adjacent to its own property. Thus, the first, second, and fourth duties listed above were inapplicable to the hospital under the facts of this case.
After recognizing that the hospital did owe a duty, the court held that limited duty did not support the judgment awarded by the jury and affirmed by the appeals court. The hospital exercised control over adjacent property by constructing a concrete pad next to the street, constructing a driveway between the hospital’s parking lot and the street, and placing traffic control signs next to the driveway.
However, none of these conditions were the proximate cause of the nurse’s death. Rather, her death was caused by a careless, third-party driver and her injury occurred in an area over which the hospital exercised no control. Further, there was no evidence indicating that the careless driving that caused the nurse’s death was influenced by the conditions that the hospital did control (e.g., the driveway or the concrete block).
Because the nurse was not injured by conditions within the hospital’s controlled area, the limited duty owed by the hospital could not support the jury’s findings and the court rendered judgment that her estate take nothing.
This Texas Supreme Court case is helpful in illustrating when a property owner assumes a duty on land that it does not own. It also emphasizes that courts are not free to create new duties based on the facts of a specific case where preexisting duty law should apply. This prevents courts from creating new duties out of tragic facts where the preexisting duty law would not support judgment in favor of the injured.
[1] HNMC, Inc. v. Chan, 683 S.W.3d 373, 378 (Tex. 2024).
[2] HNMC, Inc. v. Chan, 637 S.W.3d 919, 929-930 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2021).
[3] Chan, 683 S.W.3d at 380 (Tex. 2024).
[4] Wilson v. Tex. Parks & Wildlife Dep’t, 8 S.W.3d 634, 635 (Tex. 1999).
[5] See Alamo Nat’l Bank v. Kraus, 616 S.W.2d 908, 910 (Tex. 1981).
[6] See Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Alexander, 868 S.W.2d 322, 324 (Tex. 1993).
[7] See Renfro Drug Co. v. Lewis, 235 S.W.2d 609, 615 (Tex. 1950).
