Opinion ID: 1281612
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Problems Inherent in the Old Scheme

Text: Courts, in their efforts to distinguish between licensees and invitees, have felled whole forests and sacrificed them in an often vain attempt to explain the difference. These efforts have resulted in some opinions that strain the credulity of an honest observer. Courts on both sides of the Atlantic have pointed out the confusing complexities encountered when applying the common law classifications: A canvasser who comes on your premises without your consent is a trespasser. Once he has your consent, he is a licensee. Not until you do business with him is he an invitee. Even when you have done business with him, it seems rather strange that your duty towards him should be different when he comes up to your door from what it is when he goes away. Does he change his colour in the middle of the conversation? What is the position when you discuss business with him and it comes to nothing? No confident answer can be given to these questions. Such is the morass into which the law has floundered in trying to distinguish between licensees and invitees. Mariorenzi v. Joseph DiPonte, Inc., 114 R.I. 294, 306 n. 4, 333 A.2d 127, 133 n. 4 (1975) (abolishing distinctions between trespasser, licensee, and invitee) (quoting Dunster v. Abbot, 2 All E.R. 1572, 1574 (C.A.1953) (Eng.)). Quite often, the facts of a particular premises liability case will require a departure from Aristotelian logic in its search for common sense realism. The Indiana Court of Appeals demonstrated the mental gymnastics sometimes necessary to hold onto the old distinction in Markle v. Hacienda Mexican Restaurant, 570 N.E.2d 969 (Ind.Ct.App. 1991). In Markle, the plaintiff decided to eat at a restaurant, but upon driving into the strip mall parking lot where the restaurant was located, stopped when he saw a friend. He got out of his car to transfer an item to the friend's car, and was injured when he stepped into a pothole. Although the court decided that a jury question existed as to the duty the restaurant owed the plaintiff, they found necessary the following exercise in arcane logic: We would reach this same result if, for instance, Markle was discussing business with an associate while eating dinner at the restaurant and injured himself in the same parking lot by stepping into the same chuckhole when going out to his car for some papers to use in the discussion. One could say that Markle stepped out of his role as an inviteealthough brieflyby leaving the restaurant to get the papers. However, it is also reasonable that the owners could anticipate patrons would meet to discuss business over dinner. Thus, the question of whether the patron who has left the restaurant to get some papers from his car has stepped out of his role as invitee is one properly left to the trier of fact. Likewise, the question of whether the Shopping Center could have anticipated that Markleor any other customerwould transact business in the parking lot is one properly left to the trier of fact. Markle, 570 N.E.2d at 975 n. 2. A search of other jurisdictions reveals case after case where a court, bound by the old, common law categories, is forced to ask the wrong question. [7] The question in instances such as this should not be, was the plaintiff emblazoned with the magic letters `L' or `I' at the moment of injury?, but rather was the parking lot safe? Or, alternatively, did the landowner exercise reasonable care under the circumstances, to ensure that the parking lot was safe for a reasonably foreseeable event, namely, that somebody might walk across it? [8] Framing the question in this manner is important, because it recognizes that neither landowners nor entrants make decisions with these archaic distinctions in mind.