Opinion ID: 1404854
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Artificial

Text: The recreational use statute, RCW 4.24, is intended to encourage and protect owners of recreation areas who open their land to the public for recreational purposes. The statute applies broadly to all outdoor recreation, offering protection regardless of whether the land or water area is man-made. As the majority recognizes, the statute's limitation on liability applies equally to areas which do not remain in a natural state, e.g. a gravel mound on an excavation site, a logging road in the woods, a mixed-use trail in Seattle, and a scenic overlook bridge. Majority at 81. Moreover, the statute makes no distinction between artificial and natural bodies of water. The exception to the statutory grant of immunity is triggered only when each of the four elements, known, dangerous, artificial, and latent is present in the alleged injury causing condition. Tabak v. State, 73 Wash.App. 691, 695, 870 P.2d 1014 (1994) (each condition must be present before a landowner's duty to warn arises). Considering the exacting language of the statutory exception in conjunction with the legislative intent to encourage private landowners to open their land to the public and the incentive of landowner immunity set forth in RCW 4.24, it is clear that this court should narrowly interpret the terms known, dangerous, artificial, and latent. RCW 4.24.210(3). Nevertheless, the majority adopts a broad, literal dictionary definition of artificial as a condition contrived through human effort, blurring the line between man-made changes which are protected under the statute and those which trigger liability. In my view, this court should read artificial condition within the context of the statute as a whole and limit its meaning to conditions which are actually man-made and not occurring in nature, rather than the dictionary definition adopted by the majority. [1] Such a construction would provide future courts with meaningful distinctions in the examination of whether an injury was sustained by reason of a known dangerous artificial and latent condition. RCW 4.24.210(3). Turning to this case, we have recognized that regardless of whether a body of water is man-made, changing contours in any given body of water are generally considered natural conditions. Ochampaugh v. City of Seattle, 91 Wash.2d 514, 524, 588 P.2d 1351 (1979) (slippery debris, changing contours and murky muddy waters of a man-made pond are natural conditions). The body of water at issue here is characterized by rising water levels and dying trees which are natural to a water channel. Given that bodies of water inevitably experience changing contours over time, including varying water levels and decaying trees, I cannot agree with the majority's characterization of these natural conditions in the water channel as artificial. Although the majority places great weight on the rise in water level, the fact that construction of a dam caused a rise in the water level does not alter the analysis. As the Court of Appeals correctly held, higher water levels in the channel do not constitute an artificial condition merely because the changes may have been related to the erection of a dam. Ravenscroft v. Washington Water Power Co., 87 Wash.App. 402, 412, 942 P.2d 991 (1997), review granted, 134 Wash.2d 1018, 958 P.2d 314 (1998) (citing Chamberlain v. Department of Transp., 79 Wash.App. 212, 901 P.2d 344 (1995)); also Meyer v. General Elec. Co., 46 Wash.2d 251, 280 P.2d 257 (1955) (within the context of attractive nuisance, man-made waterways were found to possess the same naturally occurring conditions as those in natural bodies of water). [2] To hold otherwise ignores the fact that the statutory immunity applies to both natural and man-made water areas. In this case, there is no question that the specific instrument which caused plaintiff's injury was one of several submerged tree stumps. However, the existence of a tree stump and similar debris in bodies of water has already been determined to be natural conditions. Swanson v. McKain, 59 Wash.App. 303, 313-14, 796 P.2d 1291 (1990) (finding floating log or stump to be a natural condition of the water area). Clearly, this court should not interpret the existence of a submerged tree stump in a water channel any differently than one that is found floating there, since they are one and the same and both conditions are natural to bodies of water. Id. Just as the existence, evolution, and deterioration of trees are characteristic of the changing contours of the water channel, the submerged condition of the tree stumps here reflects a natural transformation of trees. Interestingly, even under its broad definition, the majority in this case stops short of defining either the body of water or tree stumps as artificial. Rather, it erroneously draws on our decision in Van Dinter to find that it is the relationship of these natural conditions to each other which creates the artificial condition. In Van Dinter, this Court engaged in a two-step inquiry to analyze whether an injury is caused by reason of a known dangerous artificial latent condition. Van Dinter, 121 Wash.2d at 43, 846 P.2d 522. The first step, the Court explained, is identification of the actual condition which allegedly caused the injury. Id. The plaintiff there claimed the proximity of a caterpillar play structure to the grassy area of the park was the injury-causing condition. The court agreed that the cause of the injury could not be regarded as the caterpillar in isolation from its surroundings. Id. This was true because the allegation was that if the border around the structure had been larger, plaintiff would not have been injured. Id. at 44, 846 P.2d 522. However, the court said, [t]he caterpillar was thus not in itself causally sufficient to have caused the accident. Id. (emphasis added). Rather than identifying the injury-causing condition and deciding whether that condition is artificial, the majority determines whether the condition is artificial by asking whether the injury-causing condition's relationship to the recreational area is the result of man-made change. Read carefully, however, Van Dinter does not state a rule that the injury-causing condition must be examined in light of its surroundings to decide whether the condition is artificial. Instead, Van Dinter directs that if the external circumstances are causally part of the condition which caused the injury, then the surrounding circumstances must be considered in deciding whether a condition is latent or artificial. Turning Van Dinter upside down, the majority collapses the two-step inquiry, determining whether the submerged stumps are artificial based on their relationship to the water channel. Because the water channel is affected by man-made changes, the majority concludes that the submerged stumps must be artificial. The problem with the majority's analysis is that it mistakenly attributes the natural occurrences in the water channel to WWP's normal use of the man-made reservoir, confounding the natural process of the trees' decay with the artificial existence and purpose of the hydroelectric project. In my view, the dispositive issue is whether, assuming the recreational area where the injury occurred is affected by man-made changes, the specific instrument that allegedly caused the injury is itself man-made and not a naturally occurring phenomenon in the area. With nothing more than a dictionary definition of artificial and a confusing application of Van Dinter, future courts are left with little guidance in discerning the extent to which liability may arise due to injuries which are sustained as a result of man-made changes in recreational areas. This is particularly so given the cases which the majority acknowledges holding that man-made changes in recreational areas do not, as a general rule, trigger an exception to the immunity afforded by RCW 4.24.210. Rather than providing a definition consistent with the statute's purpose of encouraging owners and possessors of potential recreation areas to open their property for public use, the majority's interpretation of artificial erodes the statutory protection extended to landowners, and creates uncertainty in what ought to be a narrow inquiry into landowner liability. Although erection of the dam and varied use of the reservoir may have affected the water flow to the channel, characterizing the submergence of the tree stumps as an artificial condition ignores the practical reality that numerous man-made lakes, rivers, and creeks across our state simulate nature and undergo natural processes that change the character of an area over time.