Court Opinion

ID: 9471115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:25:17.618433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:16.541354
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority’s rejection of the claim of the government that it is entitled to reversal and judgment in its favor.
I have serious doubt as to the majority’s conclusion as a matter of law that Davis was a trespasser. There seems to be no question that the public was invited into the property for recreational purposes, including swimming at various locations. Under the FTCA it is necessary to equate the government with a private individual under like circumstances. An invitee on privately owned land would not be charged with constructive notice of the private owner’s decision not to permit swimming. I doubt that Illinois would hold that an invitee becomes a trespasser by violating an ineffectively communicated restriction on an otherwise apparently acceptable use.
Similarly, I doubt whether the government’s failure to give a more adequate warning can properly be held as a matter of law to be willful or wanton.
But even assuming that the majority has correctly resolved these two issues, I do not share the “firm conviction” that the 75%-25% apportionment of causal fault was wrong. I would affirm the judgment appealed from.