Opinion ID: 2274434
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Discovering the User's Peril

Text: The record before us is replete with evidence that the city, for some time, has known about the Cliff Walk's latent dangers, including the eroding cliff edge, the drainage defects, and the fact that rainwater runoff creates what seems to be paths along the Cliff Walk. [12] Additionally, the record indicates that the city knew most users of the Cliff Walk would like to get as close to the water as possible, [and] they might mistake these erosion trails as foot paths. [13] Tragically, the record suggests that even in the face of several fatal or near fatal incidents, the city has failed to either guard against these dangers or post warnings. According to the record before us, this does not appear to be a case in which a visitor came too close to the edge of a cliff and fell off, as tragic as that would be. As alleged in this case, however, the events leading to Simcha's tragic injury were caused by latent defects in the structure of the Cliff Walk that are not obvious to the occasional visitor. The alleged facts in this case bear a haunting similarity to the plight of Michael Cain, who died in 1991 from injuries that he suffered during a visit to the Cliff Walk. See Cain, 755 A.2d at 158. The record in that case established that when Cain stepped from the paved area onto a well-worn spot    that appear[ed] to be a perfectly natural area for a stroller to stop    and look[ed] out over the Atlantic Ocean, he fell to his death,  after the ground beneath his feet gave way.  Id. at 158, 168 (Goldberg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis added). Nine years later, almost to the day, plaintiffs allege that Simcha stepped off the Cliff Walk's pavement, onto what appeared to his untrained eye to be a well-worn, grassy path when, as he contends, the ground gave way beneath his feet and he plunged to the rocks below. The city contends that it did not have a duty to warn against this danger because neither the city nor the Society observed Simcha before his fateful descent. According to the city, Simcha was not in a perilous position until he ventured off the paved walkway and attempted to walk down to the water over an area that he says he mistook for a path and which, allegedly, had been eroded by runoff. The city argues that it has no duty to guard against the latent dangers on the Cliff Walk. The city contends that for a duty to exist in this case would mean that  all visitors to the Cliff Walk    would be owed a duty to be free from willful and wanton conduct as soon as they enter upon the land and that, if that were the case, the user does not need to be discovered in peril by the owner because the city's mere knowledge that the land has a perilous condition is sufficient. We are of the opinion that the city's argument is based on an overly narrow reading of the statutory language and that such a reading would lead to an absurd and blatantly unjust result. The city argues that a user of recreational land cannot be discovered in a position of peril until the owner (in this case, a city employee) actually perceives the person approaching a known danger. The term discovery means the process of finding or learning something that was previously unknown. Black's Law Dictionary 533 (9th ed. 2009). However, at the time of Simcha's injury, the dangers surrounding the Cliff Walk were anything but unknown, and tragedies such as this have occurred on multiple occasions. It is beyond dispute that for many years, the city has had actual notice of the dangerous instability of the ground underneath the Cliff Walk and its eroding edge. Indeed, the record before us is replete with evidence demonstrating that long before the Cain tragedy, the city knew that the forces of natural erosion were taking a toll on the Cliff Walk. In 1983, and again in 1987, after Brian Putney, a Salve Regina student, fell to his death from the Cliff Walk, Sister Lucille McKillop, the college's then-president, wrote to Newport's city manager expressing her concerns about the attraction. She conveyed her concern for the safety of travelers because the entire under support structure of [the] area is so weak. Sister Lucille twice requested that the city install fencing around Shepard Avenuethe very point where plaintiff at bar accessed the Cliff Walkto delineate those points beyond which it is unsafe to pass. In July 1989, the North Atlantic Regional Office of the National Park Service reported that the Cliff Walk was in desperate need of repair. Cain, 755 A.2d at 167 (Goldberg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The report suggested that three years before Cain's death in 1991, the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the USDA Soil Conservation Service indicated a serious level of hazard to Cliff Walk visitors. Id. Additionally, a 1991 memorandum from the City of Newport recognized that [t]he Soil Conservation Service has identified seven critical areas where immediate action is needed to maintain a safe treadway for pedestrians on the Cliff Walk. Accordingly, the evidence produced in this case demonstrates that the city had actual or constructive knowledge of the perilous circumstances, and, having been afforded a reasonable amount of time to eliminate the dangerous condition, failed to do so. This failure places the members of the public whom the city invites to visit the Cliff Walk in a position of peril. In Smiler, 911 A.2d at 1041, this Court discussed the discovery language of the RUS, and we declared that [i]t would be absurd to conclude that the Legislature would require a landowner to sit idly by and wait until peril arose before a duty to warn the individual attached. Smiler involved a woman who fell after she was attacked by a swarm of bees at a Providence park. Id. at 1037. We held that the RUS was a bar to liability because Providence did not know of the presence of the bees and thus had not yet discovered the plaintiff's peril. Id. at 1037-38, 1041. It is clear to this Court that the city's duty would arise at the point when a city employee discovered that [the visitor] was approaching an area where there was a known risk of bees. Id. at 1041 (emphasis added). We also emphasize that we are not confronted with a single injury in a given location, such as the plaintiff in Smiler, who fell while running from a swarm of bees; or the nine-year-old boy in Lacey v. Reitsma, 899 A.2d 455, 456 (R.I. 2006), who was injured at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, when his bicycle veered over the cliff and fell to the rocks below, sustaining severe and permanent injuries. In Lacey, the parents of the injured child filed suit against the state, alleging negligence for failure to place a guard-rail, wall, fence, or other protective device along the road to prevent people from falling off the cliff. Id. In both of the aforementioned cases, there was no evidence that the governmental entity knew of the danger and then failed to take any action to guard against it, such that additional tragic injuries continued to occur. It is because of the multiple incidents of death and grievous injury that we conclude that the city may not successfully defend this claim based on an assertion that it had no specific knowledge of Simcha or any peril confronting him. Hundreds of thousands of people annually visit the Cliff Walk, an area in which there is a known risk of death or serious injury to unsuspecting visitors who might innocently venture off the paved path. We reject the city's argument that it does not have a duty to guard or warn against these known perils simply because a city employee did not literally discover Simcha's peril. [14] In our opinion, the city had an affirmative duty to take reasonable steps to warn and shield unsuspecting visitors, such as the Bermans, against these known and grave dangers in some reasonable manner. To construe the RUS otherwise would not only lead to an absurd result, but it would also render the exception nugatory. Furthermore, and most significantly, in the face of these multiple tragedies, we cannot conclude that when the Legislature extended the protection of the RUS to the state and its municipalities, it intended to relieve the city from any responsibility whatsoever to the many tourists who visit the Cliff Walk. Were we to interpret the statute in the manner that the city suggests, our holding would serve as a disincentive to the state and its subdivisions to make necessary safety repairs to publicly owned and taxpayer-financed recreational facilities, or to warn the unsuspecting and innocent members of the public of known dangerous conditions. We emphasize that it is the number of serious injuries flowing from a known risk that brings us to this conclusion today.