If a man chooses to leave a cart standing in the street, he must take the risk of any mischief that may be done. Illidge v. Goodwin, 5 Carrington & Payne’s Reports 190 (1881).
In the one hundred and sixty-four years since Chief Justice Tindal of the English Court of Common Pleas first set down this rule of tort liability, our means of transportation have advanced considerably. Nevertheless, the rule’s basic premise, that a tortfea-sor is liable for the foreseeable acts of an intervening party, remains sound in our modern age of aeronautics. Indeed, as this case in part demonstrates, the concept of intervening causation may apply equally well to the “mischief’ engendered by an unattended airport baggage carousel as it does to a neglected horse and wagon.
Plаintiff, Eleanor M. Stagl, appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (the Honorable John R. Bartels,
Senior District
Judge), granting summary judgment to defendant, Delta Air Lines, Inc., and dismissing her personal injury action against Delta which was based upon the airline’s alleged negligent supervision and management of its baggage retrieval system.
See Stagl v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.,
BACKGROUND
On May 1, 1993, Mrs. Stagl, then 77 years old, was a passenger on a Delta flight from Orlando, Florida to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. The plane was delayed for approximately one-half hour, and Mrs. Stagl noted that upon its arrival in New York the passengers were visibly upset. After disembarking from the aircraft, Mrs. Stagl proceeded to a designated baggage carousel lo *466 cated in Delta’s terminal in order to retrieve her luggage.
In her affidavit in opposition to Delta’s motion for summary judgment, Mrs. Stagl describes the Delta terminal as “bedlam.” According to her, “[pjeople were crowded around the baggage carousel and everyone seemed in a hurry to get out of the airport.” Moreover, they were “rowdy and unruly, pushing and shoving eaсh other, grabbing their luggage from the moving carousel by whatever means possible.” She further claims that Delta did not provide any personnel, or make any cautionary announcement to quell the turmoil; nor did the airline cordon-off a separate area in which elderly and disabled passengers could safely obtain their luggage.
In an attempt to reclaim her own belongings, Mrs. Stagl made her way to the “front rank” of the throng surrounding the baggage carousel. Apparently, an unidentified man to one side of her reached across the conveyor belt, grabbed his satchel with great force, and unwittingly triggered a domino effect. His bag collided with another’s suitcase, which, in turn, fell off the carousel, toppling Mrs. Stagl. As a result, shе suffered a broken hip.
Mrs. Stagl brought this diversity action in the district court, claiming that Delta did not exercise reasonable care to ensure her safety. She complained that the airline negligently failed to take any crowd-control measures or to provide a safe method by which elderly and disabled people could retrieve their luggage. Mrs. Stagl alleged that her physical injuries were the proximate result of Delta’s inaction.
During discovery, a representative of the airline stated that there had been other, similar accidents at Delta baggage terminals. Delta refused, however, to respond to Mrs. Stagl’s subsequent request for information regarding accidents of like kind that had occurred at or near Delta baggage carousels, and at a pretrial conference the district judge declined to require Delta to give such information. Delta then moved for summary judgment on the grounds that the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, 49 U.S.C. § 1305(a)(1), preempted Mrs. Stagl’s state law negligence claim, and that, in any event, Mrs. Stagl had failed to establish a prima facie case of negligence on Delta’s part. Mrs. Stagl opposed Delta’s motion and formally cross-moved to compel Delta to provide her with the accident information that she had previously requested.
In a Memorandum and Order dated February 22, 1994, the district court granted Delta summary judgment. The district judge held that the Airline Deregulation Act did not preempt Mrs. Stagl’s negligence claim.
See Stagl,
On appeal, Mrs. Stagl argues that the district court: (1) erroneously narrowed the duty of reasonable care that Delta owed passengers located in its luggage retrieval area; (2) usurped the jury’s function in determining that Delta acted reasоnably under the circumstances; and (3) abused its discretion in denying her cross-motion for additional discovery. We agree.
DISCUSSION
I. Delta’s Motion for Summary Judgment
To succeed on a motion for summary judgment, the moving party must show that there are no genuine issues of material fact and that it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett,
On appeal, neither party has questioned the district court’s preemption ruling, and we therefore take it as given that state law applies. Because both parties agree that New York cases are controlling, we shall assume that New York law governs this diversity action. In order to establish a
prima facie
case of negligence under New York law, a claimant must show that: (1) the defendant owed the plaintiff a cognizable duty of care; (2) the defendant breached that duty; and (3) the plaintiff suffered damage as a proximate result of that breach.
See Solomon v. City of New York,
A. Delta’s Duty of Reasonable Care
The district court ruled that “Delta owed no duty to protect [Mrs. Stagl] from the particular injury involved here.”
Stagl,
There is no question that Delta, as an owner or occupier of the premises, owed a duty to take reasonable steps in maintaining the safety of its baggage retrieval area.
See Basso v. Miller,
This duty is a broad one, and it includes the obligation “to take reasonable precautions to protect [patrons] from dangers which are foreseeable from the arrangement or use of the property,” W. Page Keeton, Dan B. Dobbs, Robert E. Keeton, David G. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Torts, § 61 at 425-26 (5th ed. 1984) [hereinafter “Prosser & Keeton”], as well as to exercise reasonable care in protecting visitors from the foreseeable, injurious actions of third parties.
See Nallan v. Helmsley-Spear, Inc.,
In deciding that “Delta was under no duty to .protect against or warn of potential negligent conduct of third рersons within the terminal building,”
Despite the loose “no duty” language contained in
Gross,
howevеr, that decision does not stand for the proposition that an airline owes its patrons no duty to take reasonable care against the foreseeable, injurious actions of third parties on airline premises. To the contrary, the court in
Gross
specifically stated that the airline “owed a duty of care to [the plaintiff] while he was on the [airline’s] check-in line.”
not presented any evidence that [the airline] failed to act reasonably in providing а safe cheek-in process. Furthermore, by failing to show what caused the woman next to him to fall, the plaintiff ha[d] failed to link his injury to any action or inaction on the part of [the airline].
The second case relied on by the district court,
Gray v. America West Airlines, Inc.,
Even if
Gray
were representative of New York law, it would be easily distinguishable. There, the accident occurred in the airport concourse, which the court described as a “busy common area[ ].”
Id.
at 84,
*469
In the present case, the district judge refused to impose an obligation upon Delta to safeguard passengers against the foreseeable risks created by its concentration of allegedly unruly travelers around a congested baggage carousel. In the district court’s opinion, such a duty would “offer little if any real public benеfit, and yet would impose upon the airline burdensome and costly obligations.”
Stagl,
To the contrary, the judicial power to modify the general rule that
[wjhenever one person is by circumstances placed in such a position with regard to another that every one of ordinary sense who did think would at once recognize that if he did not use ordinary care and skill in his own conduct with regard to the circumstances he would cause danger of injury to the person or property of the other, a duty arises to use ordinary care and skill to avoid such danger,
Havas v. Victory Paper Stock Co.,
*470 B. Delta’s Alleged Breach of Duty
Apparently as an alternative basis for its decision, the district court determined that “Delta fulfilled its duty to act reasonably under the circumstances.”
Stagl,
Answering in the affirmative, then-judge Holmes stated that “[i]n simple cases of this sort, courts have felt able to determine what, in every case, however complex, defendants are bound at their peril to know, namely, whether the given situation is on one or the other side of the line [of the defendant’s duty of care].” 170 Mass, at 600,
kind of conduct ... required under complex conditions, to reach ’the usual standard of due care, namely, the ordinary care of persons of common prudence, is a question of fact, to be determined according to the observation and experience of common men. Even when there is no conflict in testimony, if there are acts and omissions, of which some tend to show negligence, and others do not, the question whether there was negligence or not is, in my judgment, a question for the jury.
170 Mass, at 604,
Although vestiges of this polemic survive,
see, e.g., Akins v. Glens Falls City School Dist.,
particularly appropriate to leave [a finding of negligence] to the jury, not only because of the idiosyncratic nature of most tort eases ..., or because there was room for a difference of view as to whether [the defendant’s] conduct in the particular сircumstances of this case did or did not evidence a lack of due care, but, perhaps above all, because in the determination of issues revolving about the reasonableness of conduct, the values inherent in the jury system are rightfully believed an important instrument in the adjudicative process....
Havas,
Nevertheless, Delta argues that this action properly falls within a narrow category of “crowd control” cases, in which the New York courts have significantly limited the jury’s role in determining what constitutes reasonable care.
See e.g. Williams v. New York Rapid Transit Corp.,
We do not find these decisions applicable here. To start, we read these cases to stand only for the proposition that if a landowner maintains conditions that are *472 reasonably safe under circumstances of normal crowding, and if there is no excessive or unruly crowding at the time an injury occurs, the landowner does not breach his or her duty of care. Indeed, relying on a factual record that showed no overcrowding or unreasonable obstruction of a railwаy platform to support its holding, the New York Court of Appeals was nevertheless careful to distinguish factors that would have made the case one for the jury. The court stated:
This is not a case of an excessive crowding of a platform. This one is capable of accommodating a hundred or more passengers. Nor is it a case of failure to repress a boisterous or unruly aggregation of passengers. Conditions were in all respects normal.
Williams,
Moreover, although Mrs. Stagl has somewhat inartfully framed her claim in terms of negligent “crowd control,” we note that she does not base her cause of action solely on Delta’s alleged failure to control a crowd. The crux of her liability theory is the alleged absence of a reasonably safe system of passenger luggage retrieval.
Cf. Garrett v. American Airlines, Inc.,
To put it another way, Mrs. Stagl does not contend that the crowd of people in Delta’s terminal was the sole instrumentality of her injuries. Rather, she finds fault with Delta’s lack of passenger supervision in conjunction with the airline’s control and operation of its baggage carousel.
Cf.
79 N.Y.Jur.2d § 81 (1989) (“The plaintiff in all negligence cases may show that better, safer, and more practicable devices than those used were available to the defendant.”). And the existence of an unruly crowd, although certainly a relevant factor, is only one element to be considered in determining whether, in the context of thе events, Delta breached its duty of reasonable care to Mrs. Stagl.
See, e.g., Paranzino v. Yonkers Raceway, Inc.,
In support of her contention that Delta was careless in managing its baggage carousel and the сrowd around it, Mrs. Stagl submitted the affidavit of an engineer named Grahme Fischer. Mr. Fischer enumerated several ways in which, in his opinion, Delta could have made the baggage carousel area safer for passengers like Mrs. Stagl. Without expressing any views regarding the reasonableness of the proposed measures contained in this affidavit, we conclude that, when read in the light most favorable to Mrs. Stagl, Mr. Fischer’s statement clearly raises issues of fact as to whether Delta sufficiently discharged its duty of care.
Cf. Cruz,
136
*473
A.D.2d at 198,
For all these reasons, the district court’s judgment that Delta was free from negligence as a matter of law cannot stand.
C. Proximate Causation and Third Party Intervenors
Since Delta’s alleged negligence is a jury question, the district court should not have dismissed the case unless it could say, as a matter of law, that Delta’s actions were not the proximate cause of Mrs. Stagl’s injuries. According to Delta, the proximate cause of Mrs. Stagl’s injuries was the rogue passenger at the baggage carousel — that is, his luggage-wielding behavior was a superseding event that now insulates the airline from liability. This contention has no merit.
The governing rule in New York has long been settled and is perfectly clear: an intervenor’s actions will not break the necessary chain of causation where they are “a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant’s negligence.”
Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp.,
In light of these principles, Delta’s causation argument immediately fails. An impatient, suitcase-swinging traveler at a crowded airport baggage carousel hardly seems an extraordinary event.
Cf. Derdiarian,
Indeed, the appearance of a rude and hurried passenger at Delta’s LaGuardia terminal is highly unlikely to break the causal connection between the airline’s alleged negligence and Mrs. Stagl’s injury — particularly since Mrs. Stagl’s theory of negligence rests on Delta’s claimed failure to mitigate the very risks generated by such people.
See Derdiarian,
II. Mrs. Stagl’s Cross Motion for Additional Discovery
Since the District Court concluded that Delta owed Mrs. Stagl no duty of care with respect to the harm that she suffered, it denied her cross-motion for additional discovery.
See Stagl,
Discovery rulings fall within the discretion of the district court and, as a general matter, we will not disturb them on appeal absent an abuse of that discretion.
See Hollander v. American Cyanamid Co.,
To begin with, an accident record of this sort would be directly germane to establishing the degree of risk generated by Delta’s method of luggage retrieval and hence whether its failure
to
institute some other means was, in fact, negligent.
Cf. Villante v. Dep’t of Corrections,
Such information would also be highly relevant to strengthening Mrs. Stagl’s proof of causation. A history of prior passenger collisions at Delta’s baggage carousels would demonstrate beyond peradventure that the conduct of the unidentified man was a foreseeable consequence of Delta’s alleged negligence and, thus, that his behavior did not sever the link between Delta’s actions and Mrs. Stagl’s injury.
Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s denial of Mrs. Stagl’s cross-motion to compel additional discovery.
CONCLUSION
Because we hold that Delta owed Mrs. Stagl a duty to maintain its luggage retrieval area in a reasonably safe condition, and because we conclude that there exist issues of fact both as to whether Delta sufficiently discharged that duty and whether Delta’s conduct was the proximate cause of Mrs. Stagl’s injuries, we vacate the district court’s entry of summary judgment on Delta’s behalf. Furthermore, we reverse the district court’s denial of Mrs. Stagl’s cross-motion to compel additional discovery, and we remand this ease for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Notes
. In addition to the traditional landowner's duty, we note that New York law imposes a duty of reasonable care on Delta, as a common carrier, “to protect its passengers from other travelers.”
Pulka v. Edelman,
In the context of a case similar to the present one, the Fifth Circuit has provided a useful formulation of this other traditional duty:
[A] carrier must reasonably take cognizance of the habits, customs and practices followed generally by its passengers insofar as these actions present hazards to its business invitees, and with an awareness of these hazards, it must take reasonably appropriate steps to avoid or minimize the likely harm.
Garrett v. American Airlines, Inc.,
. New York courts have apparently undertaken preliminary duty analyses in situations in which the existence of liability would ran against longstanding common-law rales. Thus, in
De Angel-is,
the court refused to extend an action for loss of consortium beyond spouses to children of tort victims.
See
.
Cf. Brown v. San Francisco Ball Club, Inc.,
. It may be worth noting that Mr. Nixon wrote this article when he was a law student at Duke University Law School. Long before he became a significant political figure, Mr. Nixon's article was recognized as a leading piece on the Holmes-Knowlton controversy because it was one of the first to apply "legal realism” to the debate. Nixon suggested the desirability of the Holmes position because of the perceived tendencies of juries to be biased in favor of plaintiffs. See 3 Law & Contemp.Probs. at 477. Despite his own viewpoint, however, Nixon recognized that, by and large, Holmes had lost out. See id. at 479.
. We do not mean to suggest that summary judgment is never appropriate in these types of cases. "Only in those cases where there arises a real question as to the landowner's negligence should the jury be permitted to proceed.... Where proof of any essential element falls short, the case should go no further.”
Basso,
Based upon several older cases that discussed the limits of a common carriers' former duty of "highest care,” the district court came to the erroneous conclusion that, under New York law, Delta owes its passengers a heightened duty of care — but only during their actual course of travel.
See Stagl,
. We do not mean tо suggest that Mrs. Stagl necessarily had to submit expert evidence in order for her claim to survive summary judgment. Other evidence could have done as well. See Harper & James § 17.1, at 547 (“Except for malpractice cases (against a doctor, dentist, etc.) there is no general rule or policy requiring expert testimony as to the standard of care, and this is true even in the increasingly broad area wherein expert opinion will be received.”). Mr. Fischer's statement was merely one way to raise a triable issue of fact in this case.
. This is especially true for common carriers who, as noted above, may be legally obligated to
*474
take reasonable precautions to protect their passengers from these types of intervening parties.
See Purdy v. Public Adm’r of County of Westchester,