Opinion ID: 1932899
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Country Club's Claim as to its Duty of Care

Text: The Superior Court correctly denied Country Club's pretrial Motion for Summary Judgment and its Motion for a Directed Verdict in which Country Club claimed that it did not owe a duty to protect Mrs. Cowee from open and obvious dangers adjacent to its property. [10] Country Club claims, that as a matter of law, it did not have any duty to warn Mrs. Cowee of an open and obvious danger not on its property because it is assumed that a reasonable person would have discovered the dangerous condition or realized the danger. Country Club is incorrect because Delaware law provides that a property owner owes a business invitee a duty to provide safe ingress and egress [11] , including the duty to warn or protect against hazards on adjacent property [12] . The Superior Court therefore correctly determined that a reasonable issue of material fact existed as to whether Route 52 constituted an `open and obvious' danger to Mrs. Cowee and therefore was a disputed fact to be resolved by the jury. [13] Country Club's claim that 21 Del. C. § 4111, did not require an affirmative duty on it to erect or maintain traffic-control devices on its private property and consequently it cannot be held liable to Mrs. Cowee is incorrect. 21 Del. C. § 4111 provides in relevant part: (a) No person shall place, maintain or display upon or in view of any highway any unauthorized sign, signal, marking or device which purports to be or is an imitation of or resembles an official traffic-control device or railroad sign or signal, or which attempts to direct the movement of traffic or which hides from view or interferes with the effectiveness of any official traffic-control device or any railroad sign or signal; (b) No person shall place or maintain nor shall any public authority permit upon any highway any traffic sign or signal thereon any commercial advertising, and no person shall attach to any traffic sign or signal any other sign containing commercial advertising; (c) This section shall not be deemed to prohibit the erection upon private property adjacent to highways of signs giving useful directional information and of a type that cannot be mistaken for official signs, in compliance with § 1108 of Title 17. This statute on its face does not provide that a private landowner has no legal duty to place traffic-control devices on its property. The clear meaning of its text is that traffic-control devices may be placed on private property if the signs are intended to provide useful directional information. [14] Nor did 21 Del. C. § 503 preclude Country Club from erecting a traffic-control device on its property. It provides in relevant part: Nothing in this Section shall be construed to prohibit the erection and maintenance of signs and signals by the private owners of the real property, so long as such signs and signals are for the safety and convenience of the public and are approved by the Department of Highways and Transportation. Clearly, this statute does not prevent a private property owner from erecting traffic-control devices on its property. Whether a traffic-control device needs to be placed on private property to be useful or to provide safety features is a question of fact dependant upon the private property's unique physical characteristics. Consequently, whether Country Club should have erected a traffic-control device at the end of its private roadway at its intersection with Route 52 is a fact-specific question for the jury. The Superior Court therefore correctly refused to grant Country Club summary judgment on the issue of the safety and usefulness of such a sign. [15]