Section III. “IRAC” Brief
Issues
The Haft family, the plaintiffs, traveled to Desert Springs, where they stayed at the Lone
Pine Hotel, operated by the defendants. “The Lone Pine Hotel is a 90-unit model, with
rooms on both sides of a six-lane through street, Indian Avenue. The motel office, a
restaurant and a swimming pool are located on the east side of Indian Avenue; on the west
side there are rooms, a swimming pool and a wading pool” The Hafts stayed in a room on
the west side.
The next day, the temperature in Desert Springs was around 115 degrees. Mrs. Haft had left
to go shopping, while Mr. Haft and their son Mark decided to indulge in the pool facilities at
the motel. Mr. Haft and Mark drowned in the swimming pool at the Lone Pine Hotel. No one
actually witnessed the drowning of Mr. Haft and Mark. They had previously been seen by a
hotel guest, Ollson, in the wading pool and later in the regular pool. “At trial, Mrs. Haft
testified that although she could not say that her husband and son were “real swimmers”
they both could dog-paddle and tread water well enough to get around the pool”. This
evaluation of Mr. Haft and Mark’s swimming abilities was confirmed by Mrs. Haft’s sister
and brother-in-law. Mrs. Haft’s sister and brother-in-law had attended many vacations with
the Hafts and were quite familiar with Mr. Haft and Mark’s swimming skills.
The motel had furnished a lounging space, wading pool, and swimming pool for their
guests’ recreation, but the motel had failed to provide any safety measures required by law
for pools available for use of the public. At the pool there was no lifeguard present and no
sign posted advising guests of this fact. No markings were on the edge of the pool to state
the various depths of water or that there was a break in the slope between the deep and
shallow portions. A sign advising that children are not to use the pool without the
supervision of an adult was missing. No telephone numbers of the nearest ambulance,
hospital, fire or police rescue services, physician and pool operator were posted in the pool
area. There were no diagrammatic illustrations of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation)
procedures were posted, or that in emergencies, CPR should be begun and continued until
the arrival of a physician or emergency personnel. Additionally, there was no 12 foot long
life pole available in case of an emergency.
Regulations
The regulations present in this care are: contributory negligence, “pure” comparative
negligence, “mixed”/”limited” comparative negligence, Health & Safety Code 24101.4, and
Gould Evidence Code section 966, subdivision (a). Below are definitions of each of these
regulations:
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Contributory negligence is the plaintiff’s failure to exercise reasonable care in
attending to his or her own safety. Under a contributory negligence standard,
presently followed by the courts in the state; a plaintiff is unable to recover any
damages he or she may have sustained as a result of a defendant’s malfeasance if the
plaintiff has contributed in any way to the caused the plaintiff to suffer damages as a
result of that negligence, the doctrine of contributory negligence results in a
complete bar to recovery by the plaintiff. In any case, if the defendant can establish
that the plaintiff is to blame, in the slightest degree, for contributing to his or her
damages, then the plaintiff recovers nothing from the defendant.
“Pure” comparative negligence concludes that the award of damages to the
plaintiff will be reduced in direct proportion to the plaintiff’s percentage of fault,
regardless of the ratio.
“Mixed”/”Limited” comparative negligence concludes that in order for the
plaintiff to receive any damage recovery, the plaintiff must be no more than 50% at
fault for the injury.
Health & Safety Code 24101.4 states that pool owners who fail either to provide
lifeguard services or to post a sign warning the absence of a lifeguard are, as a
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matter of statutory policy, responsible for the consequences attributable to a failure
to provide lifeguard services.
Gould Evidence Code section 966, subdivision (a) provides: “The failure of a
person to exercise due care is presumed if: (1) He violated a state statue or
regulation of a public entity; (2) Death or injury results from an occurrence of the
nature which the state statute or regulation was designed to prevent; and (3) The
person suffering the death or the injury to his person or property was one of the
class of persons for whose protection the state statute or regulation was adopted”.
Application
If we apply contributory negligence to this case, we can see that the Lone Pine Motel
engaged in negligent conduct as a matter of law. The motel failed to satisfy mandatory
safety requirements, which were evidently designed to protect people, such as Mr. Haft and
Mark. The “plaintiffs requested the trial judge to direct the verdict for plaintiffs on the issue
of liability or, alternatively, to instruct the jury that defendants conduct was negligent as a
matter of law and that the negligence was an actual cause of the deaths”. The motel
contended that the facts “did not establish the requisite actual causation as a matter of
law”. The plaintiffs agreed that the failing to provide a lifeguard on duty or posting a sign
that would notify the guest of this fact constituted the actual cause of the deaths as a matter
of law. By doing this, the plaintiffs sustained the initial burden of proof on the issue of
actual causation; the burden then shifted to the defendants to show that the violation that
the defendants made was not the cause of the deaths.
Conclusion
The facts presented at the initial trial did not prove that the defendants held the burden of
proof on this issue. This theoretically erred the court in “declining to take the matter from
the jury”. Since the obligation of the defendants bearing the burden on this issue was not
clearly defined at the time of trial, the principles of fairness counsel determined that the
defendants should be afforded the opportunity of meeting that burden of proof. Under
these circumstances, the judgment is reversed and the case will face a new trial, at which
both parties will be fully advised to their respective burdens.