Williams v. Davis

Twanda Green was killed in a car accident when her vehicle was hit by a dump truck as she attempted to make a left turn at a T intersection. Cecilia Davis (plaintiff) brought suit as the representative of Green’s estate (plaintiff) against Beverly Williams and various others (defendants). Williams was the owner of a wooded residential property adjacent to the intersection where Green’s accident occurred. Davis argued that Green’s view of other motorists was obstructed by the foliage on Williams’s property. A trial court granted summary judgment, holding that Williams did not owe a duty. Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed, holding that Williams had a duty to motorists to manage the foliage on her land so that it did not obstruct the view of motorists at the abutting intersection. Although the appellate district court’s opinion mentioned that the foliage on Williams’s land was overgrown or obstructing, neither the record nor the briefs below indicated an assertion by Davis that the foliage extended beyond Williams’s property into the public right-of-way. As reworded by the Florida Supreme Court, a question was certified by the district court to the Florida Supreme Court regarding whether the Florida Supreme Court’s zone-of- foreseeable-risk analysis was applicable to private residential landowners whose property contained foliage that did not intrude into the public’s right-of-way, creating a duty by property owners to neighboring motorists. Florida’s zone-of-foreseeable-risk analysis was used to demonstrate the existence of a property owner’s legal duty by showing that a condition on the landowner’s property created a foreseeable zone of danger of a particular kind of injury to others.