The Plaintiff
contends that she was a residential tenant on the Defendant’s premises. The Plaintiff was in the process of cooking
french fries in a pan with grease on an electric stove when the pan suddenly
caught on fire.
The Plaintiff alleged
that the flames from the fire activated the automatic sprinkler system in the
building and water was emitted from the sprinkler head which then allegedly caused a fireball
explosion when the water contacted the boiling grease. This allegedly caused the boiling
grease to splash from the pan and burn the Plaintiff on various parts
of her body.
The case came before the court by way of Preliminary
Objections filed by the Defendant seeking to strike the Plaintiff’s vicarious
liability claim based upon the Plaintiff’s failure to identify the Defendant’s
alleged agents by name.
The Defendants
also preliminarily objected to the Plaintiff’s allegations of recklessness and
the related claim for punitive damages on the grounds that the Plaintiff has
not alleged sufficient facts to support those claims.
The Defendants additionally asserted a
“Connor” objection with regards to the Plaintiff’s references to the Defendant’s
alleged failure to comply with certain requirements of the International
Building Code and the National Fire Protection Association requirements without
specifying which code provisions or requirements were allegedly violated.
With regards to the Preliminary Objections to the vicarious
liability claim, the court addressed various appellate decisions which have repeatedly held that a plaintiff's failure to identify the Defendant’s agents by name, or the
designation of those individuals as a unit, does not justify striking agent
allegations in a Complaint. Judge Nealon noted that these appellate court decisions have led to a number of similar decisions in
the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas rejecting efforts by Defendant to
strike agency claims for failure to identify the actual or ostensible agents by
name [usually in the medical malpractice context].
The court in Rossi also noted that, to rule
otherwise, would result in numerous requests for pre-Complaint discovery in
virtually every case in order to pre-empt the filing of these types of Preliminary
Objections by Defendants. Accordingly,
these Preliminary Objections to the vicarious liability allegations in the
Complaint were denied.
Relative to the allegations of recklessness and the claim
for punitive damages, the court reviewed the requirements for this type of
cause of action and held that, based upon a review of the allegations in the Complaint,
the Plaintiff had sufficiently pled these claims under the current status of
the law. As such, these Preliminary
Objections were denied as well.
With regards to the Defendant’s Connor objections regarding
the Plaintiff’s allegations pertaining to violations of co-provisions and
requirements, the court ruled that the Plaintiff alleged sufficient facts to
implicate the Code provisions and noted that the issue of which sections of the
application Codes were applicable could be developed and determined during the
course of discovery and thereafter addressed and resolved in Pre-Trial Motions
In Limine. As such, these Preliminary
Objections were denied by the court as well.
Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click
this LINK.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.