Opinion ID: 1839972
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: policy reasons for and against abolishing classifications

Text: A number of policy reasons have been asserted for either abandoning or retaining the common-law classifications. Among the jurisdictions retaining the categories, most find value in the predictability of the common law. Some courts rejecting change have reasoned that replacement of a stable and established system of loss allocation results in the establishment of a system devoid of standards for liability. See, Jones v. Hansen, supra ; Annot., 22 A.L.R.4th 294 (1983). It also has been suggested that the harshness of the common-law rules has been ameliorated by the judicial grafting of exceptions and that creation of subclassifications ameliorated the distinctions between active and passive negligence. Jones v. Hansen, supra . These states have concluded that abandoning the established system of liability in favor of a standard of reasonable care would decrease predictability and ensure that each case would be decided on its facts. Therefore, these states claim that landowners would be less able to guard against risks. Before Kansas joined those states abolishing the invitee-licensee distinction, the Kansas Supreme Court argued that to adopt one standard of care would lower the standard of care that is now owed to invitees and produce inconsistent, unpredictable rules of law. See Gerchberg v. Loney, 223 Kan. 446, 576 P.2d 593 (1978). Furthermore, the Gerchberg court opined that to abolish the classifications would give unbridled discretion to the jury. The most common reason asserted for abandoning the categories is that an entrant's status should not determine the duty that the landowner owes to him or her. As the California Supreme Court stated in Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 118, 443 P.2d 561, 568, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 104 (1968): A man's life or limb does not become less worthy of protection by the law nor a loss less worthy of compensation under the law because he has come upon the land of another without permission or with permission but without a business purpose. Reasonable people do not ordinarily vary their conduct depending upon such matters, and to focus upon the status of the injured party as a trespasser, licensee, or invitee in order to determine the question whether the landowner has a duty of care, is contrary to our modern social mores and humanitarian values. The common law rules obscure rather than illuminate the proper considerations which should govern determination of the question of duty. In abolishing the invitee-licensee distinction, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recognized: It no longer makes any sense to predicate the landowner's duty solely on the status of the injured party as either a licensee or invitee. Perhaps, in a rural society with sparse land settlements and large estates, it would have been unduly burdensome to obligate the owner to inspect and maintain distant holdings for a class of entrants who were using the property for their own convenience ... but the special immunity which the licensee rule affords landowners cannot be justified in an urban industrial society. Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693, 706, 297 N.E.2d 43, 51 (1973). Another justification for abandoning the classifications is to eliminate the complex and unpredictable state of the law necessitated by the harsh nature of the common-law rules. See O'Leary v. Coenen, 251 N.W.2d 746 (N.D.1977). As the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed, 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. Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale, 358 U.S. 625, 630-31, 79 S.Ct. 406, 410, 3 L.Ed.2d 550 (1959). The Court recognized that 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. 358 U.S. at 630, 79 S.Ct. at 410. Referring to the judicial interpretation of the common-law distinctions as a semantic morass, the Court declined to adopt them into admiralty law. 358 U.S. at 631, 79 S.Ct. at 410. Those states abandoning the distinctions argue that instead of the entrant's status, the foreseeability of the injury should be the controlling factor in determining the liability of the landowner. See, Basso v. Miller, 40 N.Y.2d 233, 352 N.E.2d 868, 386 N.Y.S.2d 564 (1976); Mariorenzi v. Joseph Di Ponte, Inc., 114 R.I. 294, 333 A.2d 127 (1975). Many jurisdictions that have abandoned the common-law classifications as determinants of liability have found that they remain relevant in determining the foreseeability of the harm under ordinary negligence principles. See, O'Leary v. Coenen, supra ; Peterson v. Balach, 294 Minn. 161, 199 N.W.2d 639 (1972).