The Superior Court of Pennsylvania recently reaffirmed the scope of the duty owed by both a landowner and snow removal contractor during an ongoing snow storm. In Sylvester v. Alvin Ziegler Snow Removal, 2022 Pa. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1524 (Pa. Super. 2022), the plaintiff was injured by snow and ice which fell from the roof of a building as he was leaving work at the Tobyhanna Army Depot. After leaving his home at 6 a.m. on the morning of the incident and commuting for 45 minutes, the plaintiff did not encounter any snow on the roadways. Plaintiff further had no difficulty walking from his truck into work in the light snow that had accumulated on the front sidewalks.
During the workday, heavy snow piled up on the rooftops of plaintiff’s workplace and on the ground below. At the end of his shift at 5 p.m., plaintiff attempted to leave the building, but was not able to open the door more than an inch because it was blocked by snow. He used an ice chopper to push some of the snow out of the way, and after some time was finally able to get the door open enough to exit. When plaintiff exited the building, it was still snowing. The parking area had not been cleared, but the road had been plowed. While plaintiff was descending the three or four steps from the building to the ground, he heard a noise which he knew to be snow falling off the roof. He looked up to see where the noise was coming from, and was struck and knocked down by ice and snow falling from the roof.
Plaintiff testified that he could not say for sure whether there had been snow or ice on the roof before that day’s snowstorm. According to a CompuWeather report, 20 inches of snow fell on the date of the incident, with snowfall occurring from 3:45 a.m. until between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. In contrast, it had not snowed at all in the week prior to the incident.
At the time of the incident, plaintiff’s employer had a contract with the defendant snow and ice removal contractor. Pursuant to that contract, the defendant was responsible for, among other things, removing snow and ice from the roof surfaces at the depot. Defendant’s owner testified that on the day of the storm, fourteen of his employees worked to remove snow at the depot, which was their only job for the day. However, he did not have sufficient manpower to inspect the roofs of the buildings due to the heavy snow. He testified that he would have needed 250-300 people to adequately clear all of the roof surfaces given the severity of the storm. He began work at 7:00 a.m. and worked approximately eight and a half hours, before sending his employees home, as further attempts to remove the snow from the ground were futile.
Plaintiff subsequently filed a lawsuit, alleging the defendant snow removal contractor was negligent in failing to clear the snow and ice from the roof in a timely manner, thus allowing snow to accumulate for an unreasonable amount of time. Defendant, in a later filed motion for summary judgment, argued that plaintiff’s injury occurred during an ongoing snowstorm, such that a reasonable period of time, within which they were expected to clear the snow and ice, could not have expired. Stated differently, defendant argued it did not owe a duty to plaintiff to clear the snow and ice from the roof during the active storm.
The Court noted that under Pennsylvania law, a plaintiff asserting a negligence claim must establish 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. “The mere fact that an accident has occurred does not entitle the injured person to a verdict. A plaintiff must show that the defendant owed a duty of care, and that this duty was breached.” See Estate of Swift by Swift v. Northeastern Hosp., 456 Pa. Super. 330 (Pa. Super. 1997); Rauch v. Mike-Mayer, 2001 Pa. Super. 270 (Pa. Super. 2001).
In conducting its analysis, the Court cited prior Pennsylvania cases applying the “hills and ridges doctrine” in the context of slip and falls on snow and/or ice located on the ground. Those cases established (1) that there is no absolute duty on an owner or occupier of property to keep his premises free from ice and snow at all times; (2) that an owner or occupier of land is protected from liability for generally slippery conditions resulting from ice and snow where the owner has not permitted the ice and snow to unreasonably accumulate in ridges or elevations; and (3) that a landowner’s duty to remove snow and ice is triggered only “a reasonable time after” the landowner becomes aware of the dangerous conditions created by the snow and ice. See Hutchison v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 364 Pa. 126 (1950). More directly applicable was the Court’s prior decision in Collins v. Philadelphia Suburban Development Corporation, 179 A.3d 69 (Pa. Super. 2018), which held that a landowner has no obligation to correct such conditions until a reasonable time after a winter storm has ended.
Here, the Court found that plaintiff suffered an injury during a severe and active snowstorm, which dumped approximately 20 inches of snow. Under these circumstances, it would have been totally unreasonable to require the defendant to clear snow and ice from the roof of the relevant building. Because defendant did not owe a duty to plaintiff to clear snow and ice from the roof of the building during an ongoing storm, plaintiff failed to make out a prima facie case of negligence. This was so even where the defendant was on site all day and aware of the generally prevailing conditions. Thus, the Court affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant, dismissing plaintiff’s lawsuit.
