Opinion ID: 849195
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Post-contributory cases

Text: What makes this case particularly difficult is that, in an attempt to be faithful to prior precedent, some of this Court's decisions that attempted to apply the open and obvious danger doctrine in a post-contributory era confused the issue inadvertently. One such opinion, which I authored, is Williams v. Cunningham Drug Stores, Inc., 429 Mich. 495, 418 N.W.2d 381 (1988). In Williams, a store customer was injured after fleeing the store directly behind an armed robber. The primary focus in Williams was whether a business owner has a duty to his invitees to insure against harm resulting from a third-party criminal act. However, in a portion of the opinion I wrote that the duty a possessor of land owes his invitees does not extend to conditions from which an unreasonable risk cannot be anticipated or to dangers so obvious and apparent that an invitee might be expected to discover them himself. Id. at 500, 418 N.W.2d 381. The statement was supported with a citation to Restatement § 343A. But it would have been more precise to say that liability would be suspended in such circumstances. A better explanation of the duty issue was presented by the opinion's discussion of § 343, which noted that invitors have a special relationship with invitees and that possessors of land owe a duty to their invitees to exercise reasonable care to protect invitees from an unreasonable risk of harm caused by a dangerous condition on the land. A better approach to the Restatement is the one that I stated in a later opinion: When §§ 343 and 343A are read together, the rule generated is that if the particular activity or condition creates a risk of harm only because the invitee does not discover the condition or realize its danger, then the open and obvious doctrine will cut off liability if the invitee should have discovered the condition and realized its danger. On the other hand, if the risk of harm remains unreasonable, despite its obviousness or despite knowledge of it by the invitee, then the circumstances may be such that the invitor is required to undertake reasonable precautions. The issue then becomes the standard of care and is for the jury to decide. [ Bertrand at 611, 537 N.W.2d 185.] Bertrand indicated that Williams should not be read too broadly. Bertrand cited Williams for the proposition that an invitor is not relieved of the duty to exercise reasonable care to protect invitees against known or discoverable dangerous conditions, even in cases where there would be no duty to warn. Bertrand went on to say that a duty exists by virtue of the relationship between the parties, and then the opinion examined whether the duty had been breached. I continue to believe that Bertrand correctly focused on liability and on breach. Yet, given the discussions of late, I think Bertrand also may have been less precise in its terminology than it could have been. For example, at one point, I wrote, Under ordinary circumstances, the overriding public policy of encouraging people to take reasonable care for their own safety precludes imposing a duty on the possessor of land to make ordinary steps foolproof. Therefore, the risk of harm is not unreasonable. However, where there is something unusual about the steps, because of their character, location, or surrounding conditions, then the duty of the possessor of land to exercise reasonable care remains. If the proofs created a question of fact that the risk of harm was unreasonable, the existence of duty as well as breach become questions for the jury to decide. [ Id. at 616-617, 537 N.W.2d 185.] This portion of the opinion directly followed a discussion of cases decided under contributory negligence, and was an attempt to incorporate the language of some prior cases. A more correct statement of the law would have been that the duty to exercise reasonable care is not breached in cases involving ordinary steps. In that context, it may have been more evident that Bertrand's unusual characteristics discussion related to the foreseeability and unreasonableness of the risk of harm, rather than creating a special new rule. It should also be noted that the differing viewpoints I expressed in Williams and Bertrand are due in part to this Court's intervening decision in Riddle v. McLouth Steel Products . The majority in Riddle held, in pertinent part, that an invitor has no duty to warn invitees of open and obvious dangers. Justice Levin wrote a dissenting opinion, which I believe to be the more correct approach. In a nutshell, Justice Levin noted that the issue is a standard of care issue, not a duty issue. He also pointed out that the no-duty rule actually came about as one way of expressing that a plaintiff was contributorily negligent. The defendant's duty should be tied to the relationship between the parties, and that duty would be owed regardless of whether a comparative negligence or contributory negligence system is in place. A finding of comparative negligence would assume that the defendant was in fact negligent, because comparative negligence is used only as a tool for apportioning damages after a breach of duty on the part of the defendant has been found. The primary questions for the jury to resolve in premises liability cases are, first, whether the defendant has breached his duty of care, and, second, whether his liability is somehow limited by the plaintiff's comparative negligence. It is within this framework that the Restatement approach to the open and obvious danger doctrine must be viewed. I agree with Justice Levin's approach.