Opinion ID: 1292063
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Open and Obvious Hazard to Public Invitee

Text: County next argues that the trial judge should have granted it a directed verdict based on the fact the lack of a guard rail was an open and obvious condition against which Creech, a public invitee, should have been able to protect herself. We disagree. Neither party disputes Creech's status as a public invitee. In Callander v. Charleston Doughnut Corp., 305 S.C. 123, 406 S.E.2d 361 (1991), this Court adopted the Restatement approach to premises liability as relates to an invitee. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A (1965), which is the principal section at issue here, provides: (1) A possessor of land is not liable to his invitees for physical harm caused to them by any activity or condition on the land whose danger is known or obvious to them, unless the possessor should anticipate the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness. Comment e to section 343A elaborates on the rule stated in the section itself. It states: In the ordinary case, an invitee who enters land is entitled to nothing more than knowledge of the conditions and dangers he will encounter if he comes. If he knows the actual conditions, and the activities carried on, and the dangers involved in either, he is free to make an intelligent choice as to whether the advantage to be gained is sufficient to justify him in incurring the risk by entering or remaining on the land. The possessor of the land may reasonably assume that he will protect himself by the exercise of ordinary care, or that he will voluntarily assume the risk of harm if he does not succeed in doing so. Reasonable care on the part of the possessor therefore does not ordinarily require precautions, or even warning, against dangers which are known to the visitor, or so obvious to him that he may be expected to discover them. Based on this language, County argues that the absence of a rail on one side of a dock is an obvious condition that an invitee should notice and that Creech made an informed decision about whether to stay on the dock even though it had a rail on only one side. Creech argues, however, that even assuming the danger was open and obvious, County should have anticipate[d] the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness. We agree, finding that County actually did anticipate the kind of harm that occurred. Callander, 305 S.C. 123, 406 S.E.2d 361, and Meadows v. Heritage Village Church, 305 S.C. 375, 409 S.E.2d 349 (1991), are the seminal South Carolina cases interpreting section 343A. In Meadows, the plaintiff brought a negligence action against Heritage Village Church (PTL) because of injuries she sustained when she slipped on some wet grass while walking to her hotel. The jury awarded the plaintiff $25,000. On appeal, PTL argued that the plaintiff failed to meet her burden of proof of negligence because PTL only owed [plaintiff] a duty to warn of hidden, latent dangers and that the wet grass was an open and obvious danger. Id. at 376-77, 409 S.E.2d at 350. This Court found that wet grass was an open and obvious danger and that absent a showing by plaintiff that PTL should have anticipated the harm the plaintiff suffered, the trial court should have granted PTL's motion for JNOV. Because the plaintiff had other optionsfor example, she could have moved her car closer to the hotel rather than walk across the wet grass or she could have taken other paths provided by PTLthe Court found she had not shown that PTL could reasonably have foreseen that she would choose to try to cross the wet grass instead of using one of the other ways back to the hotel. Id. at 378, 409 S.E.2d at 351. The Court distinguished Henderson v. St. Francis Community Hospital, 303 S.C. 177, 399 S.E.2d 767 (1990), partially on the basis that in Henderson, the defendant had been warned that the condition ultimately causing the plaintiff's injury was dangerous. In Callander, 305 S.C. 123, 406 S.E.2d 361, the plaintiff was injured when he backed onto a chair at a doughnut shop and the seat of the chair was missing. This Court found the missing seat was not a latent defect in the chair. Nevertheless, it rejected the argument by the doughnut shop that it was entitled to a directed verdict because of the lack of any latent defect. Instead, the Court noted that [t]he traditional `no duty to warn of the obvious' rule has been modified in many jurisdictions to hold that an owner is liable for injuries to an invitee, despite an open and obvious defect, if the owner should anticipate that the invitee will nevertheless encounter the condition, or that the invitee is likely to be distracted. Id. at 125, 406 S.E.2d at 362 (emphasis added). The Court then adopted Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A. In holding that the doughnut shop was not entitled to a directed verdict under this standard, the Court found that there was evidence the owner of the doughnut shop knew senior citizens frequently backed onto their chairs and that, therefore, they might not notice a defect in a chair. Id. at 126, 406 S.E.2d at 363. This case is far more like Callander than like Meadows. Here, there was ample evidence that County had been warned the lack of safety rails could present a danger to people fishing from the dock and could expose County to potential liability. Accordingly, County was not entitled to a directed verdict based on the open and obvious nature of the dangerous condition.