Court Opinion

ID: 9606559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:50:50.829193+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:50.885614
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
While concurring with the majority opinion’s exposition of the law concerning the duty of care an owner or occupier of land owes a licensee, I disagree with the conclusion that a factual issue exists concerning the observance of that duty and foreseeability of the injury in this case.
Savage was an invitee when he first entered the restaurant’s property for the mutual benefit of the restaurant and himself as patron. Somewhere in the process of going to another bar because the Rusty Scupper closed for the night, leaving his automobile parked in the restaurant’s lot for approximately an hour, and then returning and talking with a friend for a while in the parking lot, Savage’s status changed from invitee to licensee. At the time he went into the adjoining woods to urinate, his status may even have been that of trespasser. Compare Ginn v. Renaldo, Inc. 183 Ga. App. 618 (359 SE2d 390) (1987), wherein the bar patron arrived as an invitee but departed as a trespasser.
In a somewhat similar situation, a Yale graduate left a class reunion party (held in a building formerly occupied by the Wolfs Head Society) to urinate. He had attended the party for approximately two hours, and when he left, the party was over and the building was closed. After talking to others for five or ten minutes, he proceeded towards a grassy plot by a tree, intending to urinate by a bush, but he tripped over a parapet on top of a retaining wall. He fell to a lower level and was injured. Guilford v. Yale Univ., 128 Conn. 449 (23 A2d 917) (1942). The court in Guilford upheld a jury verdict, in part because Guilford had not exceeded the limits of his invitation. Even the *342majority opinion acknowledges that Savage was no longer an invitee at the time he fell to his death.
Decided November 9, 1987
Rehearings denied December 16, 1987
Mike Treadaway, for appellant.
Michael J. Goldman, Lisa H. Ihns, Anthony J. McGinley, Tommy T. Holland, J. Kenneth Moorman, Alan L. Newman, for appellees.
Jonathan M. Engram, amicus curiae.
Under the circumstances of the instant case, the only reasonable conclusion is that the appellees did not unreasonably subject Savage to a risk of harm. The restaurant provided rest room facilities on the premises for its patrons, and the appellees should not be held to a standard of expecting its patrons instead to seek relief in the areas adjoining the restaurant parking lot, much less expecting a former patron who had gone to another bar to continue drinking after the restaurant closed and who had returned to the restaurant parking lot an hour later only to retrieve his car. The majority opinion misplaces its reliance upon the deposition testimony of the contractor’s foreman, who remembered that they had jokingly reflected about the possibility of someone urinating in the bushes and falling, because the real issue is whether the appellees unreasonably dismissed this contingency as unlikely.
It is plain and indisputable that what happened in this case was not reasonably to be expected. For the sake of all the Savages of the world seeking relief, no doubt it would have been better for the appellees to have erected some kind of fence, hand rail, barrier or riprap (volley-ball sized rocks). However the appellees breached no duty by failing to do so, and the trial court properly granted summary judgment for the appellees.
Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent. I am authorized to state that Judge Carley joins in this dissent.