Opinion ID: 1281612
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Modern Trend

Text: A growing number of courts have taken Occam's Razor to this problem, in search for a simpler and more predictable rule. Nearly 40 years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to apply the common law categories to admiralty law, and identified the conflict between a feudally-derived liability standard and modern tort theory: The distinctions which the common law draws between licensee and invitee were inherited from a culture deeply rooted to the land, a culture which traced many of its standards to a heritage of feudalism. In an effort to do justice in an industrialized urban society, with its complex economic and individual relationships, modern common-law courts have found it necessary to formulate increasingly subtle verbal refinements, to create subclassifications among traditional common-law categories, and to delineate fine gradations in the standards of care which the landowner owes to each. Yet even within a single jurisdiction, the classifications and subclassifications bred by the common law have produced confusion and conflict. As new distinctions have been spawned, older ones have become obscured. Through this semantic morass the common law has moved, unevenly and with hesitation, towards imposing on owners and occupiers a single duty of reasonable care in all the circumstances. Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 358 U.S. 625, 630-31, 79 S.Ct. 406, 410, 3 L.Ed.2d 550, 554-55 (1959) (footnotes omitted). Clearly the justices underestimated the degree of hesitation, but today we do our part by wading out of the semantic morass. The Supreme Court's opinion in Kermarec paralleled the logic of the English Parliament, which two years earlier passed the Occupiers Liability Act, 5 & 6 Eliz. 2, ch. 31 (1957) (Eng.), abolishing the distinction between licensees, invitees, and so-called contractual visitors. Before so doing, the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain appointed a committee to determine the need for reform, if any. The committee reported that: We think ... that the existing distinction between invitees and licensees based on the presence or absence of some material interest on the part of the occupier, or alternatively, on some material interest common to occupier and visitor, is untenable as a rational ground for fixing the occupier with a higher duty of care towards the former than towards the latter.... Where, on the facts of the particular case, an occupier has been culpably careless and his visitor has been thereby injured, the courts have usually contrived to fix him with liability, and conversely have been able to absolve the occupier in cases where the accident could not, in popular language, fairly be said to have been his fault. But this has been done in spite of, rather than with the assistance of, the categories, which, as it seems to us, tend to embarrass justice by requiring what is essentially a question of fact to be determined by reference to an artificial and irrelevant rule of law. Law Reform Committee, Third Report, Cmd. 9305 at 31 (1954), quoted in Charles P. Dribben, Comment, The Outmoded Distinction Between Licensees and Invitees, 22 Mo. L.Rev. 186, 194-95 (1957). Not lost upon this Court is the irony that we, who inherited this system from the Mother country, still cling to it when those who originally foisted it upon us have forsworn its use. Soon after the opinion in Kermarec, several states abandoned the old scheme, starting with California in Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561 (1968). Over 30 years ago, the California court realized that the old classifications were outmoded: Complexity can be borne and confusion remedied where the underlying principles governing liability are based upon proper considerations. Whatever may have been the historical justifications for the common law distinctions, it is clear that those distinctions are not justified in the light of our modern society and that the complexity and confusion which [sic] has arisen is not due to difficulty in applying the original common law rulesthey are all to easy to apply in their original formulationbut is due to the attempts to apply just rules in our modern society within the ancient terminology. Rowland, 69 Cal.2d at 117, 70 Cal.Rptr. at 103, 443 P.2d. at 567. The Rowland court could see that application of the old distinction in premises liability cases often yields a result that seems unjust by the standards of today, especially when viewed in light of the general principles of negligence that we employ in other tort cases. Broad generalizations about the state of premises liability law in other jurisdictions are always subject to caveats and limitations. Several states have special rules for invited social guests; others limit landowner liability via recreational use statutes, or employ a distinction between active and passive negligence. Having said that, our research reveals that at least 25 jurisdictions have abolished or largely abandoned the licensee/invitee distinction. Among these 25 jurisdictions that have broken with past tradition, at least 17 have eliminated or fundamentally altered the distinction. [9] Another eight of the 25 have eliminated even the trespasser distinction. [10] And, of those retaining the old scheme, judges in at least five of those states have authored vigorous dissents or concurrences arguing for change. [11] A look at some of these cases provides an example of the logic that persuades us to join the modern trend. [12] In a recent Nebraska case, a father visited his daughter, who worked at a hospital, and injured his back when he slipped on snow-covered stairs as he left the building. The lower court held that, because the father was visiting the daughter, he was a licensee and could not recover in a suit against the hospital. The Supreme Court of Nebraska recognized this absurd result: When he was injured, Heins was exiting a county hospital, using the main entrance to the hospital, over the lunch hour. If Heins had been on the hospital premises to visit a patient or purchase a soft drink from a vending machine, he could have been classified as an invitee.... However, he came to visit his daughter and was denied recovery as a matter of law. Thus Heins was denied the possibility of recovering under present law, merely because on this trip to the hospital he happened to be a licensee rather than an invitee. In the instant case, the hospital would undergo no additional burden in exercising reasonable care for a social visitor such as Heins, because it had the duty to exercise reasonable care for its invitees. A patient visitor could have used the same front entrance at which Heins fell and would have been able to maintain a negligence action; however, Heins has been denied the opportunity to recover merely because of his status at the time of the fall. Heins v. Webster County, 250 Neb. 750, 759-60, 552 N.W.2d 51, 56 (1996) (citation omitted). The Heins court perceived the obvious question, did the hospital exercise reasonable care under the circumstances? The court went on to abolish the common law categories: We conclude that we should eliminate the distinction between licensees and invitees by requiring a standard of reasonable care for all lawful visitors. Id. at 761, 552 N.W.2d at 57. Another recent case in which a court abandoned the old scheme is Nelson v. Freeland, 349 N.C. 615, 507 S.E.2d 882 (1998). In Nelson, Mr. Freeland requested that his friend Mr. Nelson pick him up at his home for a business meeting the two were going to attend. In doing so, Mr. Nelson tripped over a stick Mr. Freeland had left lying on his porch. Mr. Freeland won summary judgment, which Mr. Nelson appealed. After a lengthy, exhaustive, and well-written analysis of the history of the common law trichotomy, the North Carolina Supreme Court abandoned the licensee/invitee distinction: Given the numerous advantages associated with abolishing the trichotomy, this Court concludes that we should eliminate the distinction between licensees and invitees by requiring a standard of reasonable care toward all lawful visitors. Adoptions of a true negligence standard eliminates the complex, confusing, and unpredictable state of premises-liability law and replaces it with a rule which forces the jury's attention upon the pertinent issue of whether the landowner acted as a reasonable person would under the circumstances. Nelson, 349 N.C. at 631, 507 S.E.2d at 892. Some would argue, and indeed this Court has stated in the past, [13] that the strength of the old system is that it engenders predictability. We are no longer persuaded by this argument. As we noted above, the average person has no idea that such a rule exists. Indeed, in situations such as the case before us, homeowners would probably imagine that if anyone is entitled to protection on their property (and coverage under a homeowners policy), surely their friends and loved ones would qualify. In fact, it is counterintuitive to most lay persons, and many a law student, that those closest to us are not afforded the same protection the law provides to the meter reader or the paper boy. Complicating this confusion among property owners is the fact that an entrant can cascade chameleonlike through the various colors of entrant status, from trespasser to licensee to invitee and back, in the course of a single visit. [14]