Court Opinion

ID: 9759464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:17:21.210938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:01.941176
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
We cannot hope to get the right answer in this case if we do not understand the question. The question is whether, because of the trespasser statute (KRS 381.-232), Louisville Gas & Electric Company (hereinafter “LG & E”) enjoys immunity from paying its fair share of responsibility for this occurrence, if it can be proved, as alleged, that LG & E was wholly or partially at fault.
The real issues in this case are:
1) Is the trespass statute constitutional?
2) If not, is there common law immunity?
3) Is this a summary judgment case?
The first question is the constitutionality of the trespass statute enacted in 1976. It turns on whether the statute impairs constitutionally protected rights guaranteed by Sections 14, 54 and 241 of the Kentucky Constitution. In 1890 our constitution for-bearers structured our Constitution to prevent the General Assembly from enacting laws to grant privileges and immunities to the politically powerful at the expense of the people. See 1890 Constitutional Debates, 4 Vol. Therefore, to protect the tort rights of our citizens, the Constitution prevents the General Assembly from interfering with the right of redress in the courts for personal injury or with remedy by due course of law (Section 14), from limiting the amount of recovery for personal injury or wrongful death (Section 54), and from interfering with the right to recover damages in every case where death results from injury inflicted by negligence or wrongful act (Section 241). As stated in Ludwig v. Johnson, 243 Ky. 533, 49 S.W.2d 347 (1932), holding the Kentucky automobile guest statute unconstitutional under these Sections:
*846“... the conclusion is inescapable that the intention of the framers of the Constitution was to inhibit the Legislature from abolishing rights of action for damages for death or injuries caused by negligence. Id. [49 S.W.2d] at 350.
In Happy v. Erwin, Ky., 330 S.W.2d 412 (1959), our Court confronted and held unconstitutional a statute which extended immunity to the officers and employees of the City of Mayfield for negligence in the operation of its fire apparatus outside the city limits. The Court quoted from Ludwig v. Johnson as follows:
“It was the manifest purpose of the framers of that instrument [the Constitution] to preserve and perpetuate the common-law right of a citizen injured by the negligent act of another to sue to recover damages for his injury.” 49 S.W.2d at 351.
This case cannot be distinguished from the Ludwig case. In the Ludwig case the statute at issue prohibited the passenger’s right of recovery against the driver absent intentional misconduct. In the present case the statute at issue is in terminology essentially identical. It prohibits recovery “for injuries sustained by the trespasser on the real estate of the owner, except for injuries which are intentionally inflicted....” KRS 381.232.
Nothing has changed since the Ludwig case except the climate on this Court. For reasons that cannot be explained except in terms of retreat from constitutional principles, we are no longer prepared to preserve individual rights constitutionally protected.
If we face the issue squarely we will acknowledge that it has not been the law since the days of feudalism that the only duty owed to a trespasser is not to intentionally injure him. In language expressed by Mr. Chief Justice Kenison of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, in Sargent v. Ross, 113 N.H. 388, 308 A.2d 528, 530 (1973), “[t]his ‘quasi-sovereignty of the landowner’ ... finds its source in an agrarian England of the dark ages”; it should “be relegated to the history books where it more properly belongs.” Id. 308 A.2d at 533.
There are two types of trespassers: wrongdoers who come upon the property for some illicit purpose, and innocent trespassers who intend and commit no harm. Long before our present constitution our law had taken account of the difference and recognized the legal responsibility of the landowner to the innocent trespasser where injury to the intruder was foreseeable and readily preventable. Two distinctly discernible inroads involved cases recognizing the attractive nuisance doctrine and cases recognizing a new classification of implied licensee. Bramson’s Adm’r. v. Labrot etc., 81 Ky. 638 (1884), and Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Popp, 96 Ky. 99, 27 S.W. 992 (1894), recognize the landowner’s duty towards children who are attracted to play on the premises. And in Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Spoonamore’s Adm’r., 278 Ky. 673, 129 S.W.2d 175, 177 (1939), we find a discussion of the responsibility owed to “trespassers [who] constantly intrude upon a limited area ... for bodily harm there caused to them by [the landowner’s] failure to carry on an activity involving a risk of death or serious bodily harm with reasonable care for their safety.” Spoonamore’s Adm’r. achieves this result by designating such a trespasser a bare licensee. The trespasser was seventeen years old.
The present case presents a situation for application of the so-called “attractive nuisance doctrine,” as in Bramson’s Adm’r. and Popp, supra, unless the child’s right to protection from foreseeable injury is foreclosed by the age barrier (the 15th birthday). Heretofore the attractive nuisance doctrine has been limited to children under the age of fourteen. However, nothing magical occurred on Christopher Kirschner’s fourteenth birthday. The reason for limiting the attractive nuisance doctrine to children under the age of fourteen related to the doctrine of contributory negligence, and nothing else. Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Hutton, 220 Ky. 277, 295 S.W. 175 (1927). At common law all persons over the age of fourteen were held responsible for their own negligence in the same way as adults. Thus contributory negligence as a matter of law foreclosed consideration of *847the landowner’s negligence after age fourteen. However, we now utilize the principle of comparative negligence and contributory negligence is not a complete bar to recovery. Hilen v. Hays, Ky., 673 S.W.2d 713 (1984). Young Christopher Kirschner’s negligence no longer absolves LG & E from its share of responsibility. If it can be proved, as claimed, that this transmission tower was located in a field in a residential neighborhood commonly used as a playground, readily accessible and frequently utilized for climbing, with those climbers unknowingly exposed to a concealed and powerful danger, the arcing potential of electricity in high voltage wires; if, as alleged, all this was known or should have been known to LG & E; if, as alleged, the injury was foreseeable and preventable by fencing the tower or by warning of this danger from arcing, or both; then LG & E has a legal responsibility in what has occurred.
The Kirschners’ claim their evidence will show that this arcing potential in high voltage wires is a concealed, latent, highly dangerous condition which was known to the defendant and not to the plaintiff. The Kirschner boy has testified that he did not get within six feet of the high tension wires on this tower. If the facts asserted by the Kirschners are true, the result reached in the Majority Opinion belongs in Feudal England where protection of the property of the privileged class was more important than the lives of the common people, but it does not square with the right of redress guaranteed by our Kentucky Constitution. The right of redress for an injury negligently inflicted as guaranteed in our Constitution recognized an exception for trespassing children and those trespassers who were permitted to continually and foresee-ably intrude up on the premises, who were then called implied licensees. Our Constitution did not limit such persons to recovery only for injuries intentionally inflicted upon them, and we commit grievous error in interpreting our Constitution to permit such immunity by statute.
It is obvious that the Majority Opinion recognizes the statute’s shortcomings. It seeks to avoid such shortcomings by “construing ... intentionally inflicted” to mean something else, although unfortunately the something else is something short of what the law of torts provides for this situation. The Majority Opinion assigns to the statutory term, “intentionally inflicted,” a definition from Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts (5th ed. 1984), which is appropriate for the words “willful,” “wanton,” or “reckless,” but inappropriate to the statutory term at issue. Then the Majority Opinion cites Kentucky Central R.R. Co. v. Gastineau’s Adm’r., 83 Ky. 119 (1885), which recognizes the trespasser’s right to recover for an injury “wantonly inflicted” and which further recognizes a duty of care towards trespassing children, as included within the statutory term “intentionally inflicted.” In order to avoid declaring the statute unconstitutional, the Majority Opinion stretches the unconstitutional term “intentionally inflicted” beyond recognition.
No one reading this Majority Opinion can possibly grasp its meaning. It confuses the law, rather than clarifying it, to say this statute does no more than codify the common law. The working premise for this case should be to declare the statute unconstitutional, which it is, and then go forward with deciding whether LG & E, which was erroneously granted a summary judgment based on the statutory requirement that the injury be “intentionally inflicted,” was in fact entitled to a summary judgment at common law. Based on the pleadings and evidence of record, the answer to this question is an emphatic no, for two reasons.
The first reason is covered in the Dissenting Opinion by Chief Justice Stephens. A summary judgment is appropriate only when it is clear from the record that there is “no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law,” and here there is a “question as to [the Kirschner boy’s] status as a trespasser.”
As Chief Justice Stephens states:
“Appellant contends that he was not a trespasser, but that he had an implied *848invitation to play in the field and on the tower. He claims the appellee knew of the children playing there and made no attempts to stop it, thus inviting his actions.”
Assuming that LG & E did not know that children played on this particular electrical transmission tower, or at least that actual knowledge cannot be proved, the record shows that LG & E knows of the propensity of children and others in populated areas to climb such towers and that it does on occasion fence such towers to deter them. High tension transmission wires are “one of the most dangerous things known to man.” Dunning v. Kentucky Utilities Co., 270 Ky. 44, 109 S.W.2d 6, 9 (1937). Although the danger from touching such a wire is obvious, the arcing potential that caused this injury is certainly not a matter of common knowledge. The “DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE” sign would hardly alert a teenage boy to the hidden danger that caused this catastrophe.
The next reason is that, in the present circumstances, regardless of classification as trespasser or licensee, the evidence is sufficient to apply the “attractive nuisance” doctrine. Prosser, Law of Torts, Sec. 59 (4th ed. 1971); Restatement (Second) of Torts, Sec. 339 (1966). The present situation satisfies the requirements for liability under this doctrine except for the age limit of fourteen utilized in Kentucky in earlier cases. Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Hutton, supra; Bentley v. Southeast Coal Co., Ky., 334 S.W.2d 349 (1960). With the demise of contributory negligence as an absolute defense, the advent of Christopher Kirschner’s fourteenth birthday fourteen months before the occurrence no longer forecloses its application.
Restatement (Second) of Torts, Sec. 339, Comment C, Children, states:
“The later cases, however, have included a substantial number in which recovery has been permitted, under the rule stated, where the child is of high school age, ranging in a few instances as high as sixteen or seventeen years. The explanation no doubt lies in the fact that in our present hazardous civilization some types of dangers have become common, which an immature adolescent may reasonably not appreciate, although an adult may be expected to do so. The rule stated in this Section is not limited to ‘young’ children, or to those ‘of tender years,’ so long as the child is still too young to appreciate the danger, as stated in Clause (c).
... The great majority of the courts have rejected any such fixed age limit, and have held that there is no definite age beyond which the rule here stated does not apply. As the age of the child increases, conditions become fewer for which there can be recovery under this rule, until at some indeterminate point, probably beyond the age of sixteen, there are no longer any such conditions.”
The Majority Opinion seeks to rescue statutory language (“intentionally inflicted”), clearly unconstitutional, with an unworkable explanation that it means something different and less offensive. Unfortunately, the court’s holding that the statute and its offending language is constitutional will become the law and the unintelligible explanation will be disregarded. It is profoundly regressive, by statute or otherwise, to stick the landowner in a protected pigeonhole solely by reason of his status as landowner, and there to immunize him from any further responsibility to the rest of humanity except for injury intentionally inflicted. The duty to exercise reasonable care commensurate with the circumstances not to injure other human beings is the universal duty owed by everyone to everyone. Gas Services Co., Inc. v. City of London, Ky., 687 S.W.2d 144 (1985). Certainly there are circumstances where as a matter of law it is unreasonable to impose liability, and the defendant’s status as landowner is an important factor in determining what is reasonable conduct. But the landowner’s status is by no means a complete and final answer. An enlightened legal system does not reason backward from labels, or from titles, to decide on whether there is a duty of reasonable care towards one’s fellow man. It reasons forward from this premise using foreseeability, the gravity of the potential harm, and *849the landowner’s right to control his property, to decide what is reasonable conduct in the circumstances and what is negligence.
Recently, we discarded the pigeonhole approach to dram shop liability, holding tavern keepers responsible for the foreseeable consequences when serving liquor to a noticeably intoxicated person. Grayson Frat. Order of Eagles v. Claywell, Ky., 736 S.W.2d 328 (1987). We quoted with approval from Prosser & Keeton, Law of Torts, Sec. 53 (5th ed. 1984), discussing “the ‘artificial character’ of reasoning from the premise of ‘no duty’ in disregard of negligence principles.” 736 S.W.2d at 330. It is this fundamental principle that liability follows fault that is protected by Sections 14, 54 and 241 of our Kentucky Constitution against a grant of immunity by the General Assembly.
We should hold KRS 381.232 unconstitutional and further hold that the summary judgment was premature. We should remand this case to the trial court for further consideration under the principles of tort law discussed in this Dissenting Opinion.