Opinion ID: 2355918
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Was the State's Property, the Tree, in a Dangerous Condition?

Text: The commission argues that Cain failed to demonstrate a dangerous condition of the property. This Court has explored the meaning of dangerous condition in two prior cases. Kanagawa v. State ex rel. Freeman, 685 S.W.2d 831, 835 (Mo. banc 1985), held that low fences at a prison, which allowed a rapist to escape and attack the plaintiff, were not defects in the physical condition of the fence. Dangerous condition, this Court said, refers to defects in the physical condition of the public entity's property. Id. (emphasis added). [4] This Court expanded on the definition of dangerous condition in a second case, Alexander v. State, 756 S.W.2d 539 (Mo. banc 1988). There, this Court held that the placement of a partition at the bottom of a ladder created a dangerous condition even though there was no physical defect in any of the property. Id. at 541-542. The Court explained that the danger was created not by any intrinsic defect in the property involved, but by the dangerous condition created by the positioning of various items of property. [5] Id. at 542. The condition was dangerous because its existence, without intervention by third parties, posed a physical threat to plaintiff. Id. The commission argues that there was no physical defect in the tree before the crew arrived to fell it. That is true, but under Alexander , it has no legal bearing on the issue. In Alexander , when the plaintiff climbed the ladder, there was no dangerous condition. Before he descended, someone placed the partition at the bottom of the ladder creating the dangerous condition. The present case is analogous. When Cain and her crew arrived, the tree was not dangerous. Cain's co-worker stopped cutting twice to fix the chain saw. When the tree fell, the co-worker was not cutting it but was trying to fix the saw with the help of another inmate. The tree was standing for several minutes, after the sawing, before it fell. During this time, a dangerous condition existed: the tree could fall at any moment. This evidence was sufficient for a jury to conclude that the manner in which the inmate worker cut the tree, prior to it falling, created a dangerous condition within the meaning of the statute. [6]