Court Opinion

ID: 9717159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:59:23.378205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:51.746877
License: Public Domain

*497Shanahan, J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion misconstrues the Recreation Liability Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 37-1001 through 37-1008 (Reissue 1978). Section 37-1001 states: “The purpose of sections 37-1001 to 37-1008 is to encourage owners of land to make available to the public land and water areas for recreational purposes by limiting their liability toward persons entering thereon and toward persons who may be injured or otherwise damaged by the acts or omissions of persons entering thereon.” The legislative history of the Recreation Liability Act and numerous interpretative decisions by courts of states having statutes similar to the Nebraska act compel the conclusion that the act does not apply to the present case. The Recreation Liability Act is designed to encourage public access to and recreational use of privately held undeveloped lands. To induce the private landowner’s permission for such public use, the Legislature has promised reduced exposure to liability for injuries occurring in recreational areas opened to the public. See, Tallaksen v. Ross, 167 N.J. Super. 1, 400 A.2d 485 (1979); Harrison v. Middlesex Water Company, 158 N.J. Super. 368, 386 A.2d 405 (1978); Michalovic v. Racing Assn, 79 A.D.2d 82, 436 N.Y.S.2d 468 (1981); Johnson v. Stryker Corp., 70 Ill. App. 3d 717, 388 N.E.2d 932 (1979); Cedeno v. Lockwood, Inc., 250 Ga. 799, 301 S.E.2d 265 (1983). “The purpose of this [recreational use legislation] is to limit the liability of private landowners, thereby encouraging them to make their property available for public recreation. . . . Thus, there is an objective basis for the aim of recreational use acts: to promote increased public access to private lands by reducing the liability of landowners and occupiers.” Barrett, Good Sports and Bad Lands: The Application of Washington’s Recreational Use Statute Limiting Landowner Liability, 53 Wash. L. Rev. 1, 3-4 (1977). By the Recreation Liability Act the state avoids expensive acquisition of considerable land for *498public recreational use, that is, state-owned or -leased areas, and in return grants restricted or limited liability to private landowners providing areas for public recreation. Consequently, the question of negligence in operating a city park is not within the purview of the Recreation Liability Act. Putting aside the particular situation involved in this case, patrons of public parks should be alert to the effect of the majority opinion and its rule regarding care required in operating a municipal park, i.e., responsibility for injury caused only by willful or malicious failure to protect the public admitted without charge to any city park.
Without conceding applicability of the Nebraska Recreation Liability Act to the present case, we disagree with other aspects of the majority opinion.
There were 46 camper pads within the city park. Ray Stoops, grandfather of the plaintiffs, paid $10.50 to park his trailer on camper pad No. 25. The fee or charge entitled the Stoopses to 3 days’ occupancy of the camper pad, namely, until July 6, according to registration receipt No. 6268 issued by the park caretaker for pad No. 25. Also, in exchange for the fee, the city provided Stoops with electrical service for his camper pad, or, as the city superintendent of parks testified, Stoops was “allowed to plug into the electrical stanchion that’s at that particular pad for his trailer.” Electrical service was not available to everyone entering the park but was provided only to those paying for particular camper pads. As testified by city park employees, the superintendent of parks, district foreman, and caretaker for the park, Stoops had “exclusive possession” of pad No. 25, for, as the superintendent of parks testified, “That’s the whole intent.” The district park foreman acknowledged that when a person “rented” a pad, that person was entitled to exclusive use to the extent that, upon request by the paying occupant of the pad, park personnel would remove any unwanted or unauthorized person intruding upon the camper pad. *499If those efforts of park personnel were unsuccessful, police would be summoned to remove the unwanted intruder. As described by the park caretaker: “I would call the cruiser.” The park caretaker also testified there was no restriction regarding visitors to Stoops’ camper pad, including visits by Stoops’ grandchildren, which was “consistent with the fee that he paid.”
The majority opinion acknowledges that Stoops paid “a fee . . . for the right to park a camper upon a specific pad.” Although the majority feels that the nature of negligence under the Recreation Liability Act turns only on the presence or absence of a charge for admission, an admission fee is not the sole determinant regarding the type or degree of negligence required for liability under the act. The March 26, 1965, Committee Statement on L.B. 280 (Recreation Liability Act), of the Agriculture and Recreation Committee, contains the following: “The act provides no inherent limitations on liability for willful or malicious failure to guard or warn against a dangerous condition, use, structure, or activity, or for injury suffered in any case when a charge is made unless that charge he in the nature of rent.” (Emphasis supplied.) Stoops’ use and occupancy of the camper pad included benefits and rights not enjoyed by the general public admitted to the park, and even included exclusion of the public from the camper pad, if Stoops saw fit. Stoops acquired such benefits and rights by payment of the fee or charge not required of the general public for admission to the park. In the final analysis, and by any reasonable definition or construction, the charge paid by Stoops was rent, that is, consideration or compensation “paid for use or occupation of property.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1166 (5th ed. 1979). See, Modular Concepts, Inc. v. So. Brunswick Twp., 146 N.J. Super. 138, 369 A.2d 32 (1977); Rosewood Corp. v. Transamerica Ins., 57 Ill. 2d 247, 311 N.E.2d 673 (1974); Whiting Paper Co. v. Holyoke Water Power *500Co., 276 Mass. 542, 177 N.E. 574 (1931); White Roofing Company v. Wheeler, 39 Ala. App. 662, 106 So. 2d 658 (1957); Kennedy v. Boston-Continental Nat. Bank, 11 F. Supp. 611 (D. Mass. 1935); Young v. Home Telephone Co., 201 S.W. 635 (Mo. App. 1918). “Charge,” within the Recreation Liability Act/ includes not only payment for admission to a recreational area but also the charge paid for the use or occupancy of a site within the recreational area. The Recreation Liability Act was clearly intended to preserve rights of persons injured by ordinary negligence of the landowners charging rent as in the case now before us.
As one of the grounds for denying recovery by the plaintiffs, the majority states: “Moreover, the fee for use of camper pad No. 25 was paid by Evelyn Stoops [plaintiffs’ grandmother] and not by the plaintiffs.” Lurking within the majority opinion is the requirement of privity — liability dependent upon a precedent contractual relationship between the injured person and the negligent tort-feasor. “At one time a showing of privity was considered necessary to occasion liability for negligence, but the courts have been getting away from that .doctrine and many have entirely repudiated and discarded it; and under the modern doctrine liability is based on foreseeability rather than privity.” 65 C.J.S. Negligence § 4(11) at 502 (1966). Justice Cardozo, almost 70 years ago, rejected the condition or requirement of privity in a product liability suit for negligence, when he stated in MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., 217 N.Y. 382, 390, 394, 111 N.E. 1050, 1053-54 (1916): “We have put aside the notion that the duty to safeguard life and limb, when the consequences of negligence may be foreseen, grows out of contract and nothing else. . . . [F]oresight of the consequences involves the creation of a duty.” As expressed in Nelson v. Union Wire Rope Corp., 31 Ill. 2d 69, 86, 199 N.E.2d 769, 779 (1964): “It is axiomatic that every person owes to all others a duty to exercise ordinary *501care to guard against injury which naturally flows as a reasonably probable and foreseeable consequence of his act, and that such duty does not depend upon contract, privity of interest or the proximity of relationship, but extends to remote and unknown persons.” See, also, Webel v. Yale University, 125 Conn. 515, 7 A.2d 215 (1939); cf., McKinley v. Slenderella Systems of Camden, N.J., Inc., 63 N.J. Super. 571, 165 A.2d 207 (1960); Robinson v. Colebrook Guaranty Bank, 109 N.H. 382, 254 A.2d 837 (1969). Today, most courts adhere to the rule that duty as an element of negligence is based not on privity but on foreseeability that harm may result if care is not exercised. See, Harvard v. Palmer & Baker Engineers, Inc., 293 Ala. 301, 302 So. 2d 228 (1974); Orlo v. Connecticut Co., 128 Conn. 231, 21 A.2d 402 (1941); cf. J’Aire Corp. v. Gregory, 24 Cal. 3d 799, 598 P.2d 60, 157 Cal. Rptr. 407 (1979). ‘‘The duty of vigilance to prevent injury has its source in the law applicable to human relations rather than in a narrow conception of privity.” 57 Am. Jur. 2d Negligence § 37 at 385 (1971). In the case before us it was foreseeable that family members, including the Stoopses’ grandchildren, would be visiting Ray and Evelyn Stoops at their trailer. This foreseeability resulted in the city’s duty to use reasonable care in protecting Stoops’ visitors, namely, guarding against injuries caused by hazards such as the barrel bomb on pad No. 25. It is some small solace that the explosion did not launch the trailer from the pad. ‘‘The rule of reasonable care under the circumstances could not limit the conduct of Robinson Crusoe as he was first situated. But as soon as he saw the tracks in the sand, the rule began to have vitality. He then had notice that there might be other persons on the island, and this knowledge of their presence made it his duty as a reasonable man to use reasonable care to the end that no act of his should injure them.” Huckabee v. Grace, 48 Ga. App. 621, 628, 173 S.E. 744, 749 (1934). Footprints, camper pads, and trash bar*502reís; the result is the same. At sea on privity, Nebraska jurisprudence will find itself on an island without even Crusoe.
Established park policy called for removal of any barrel not placed in the park by the city. The city had no black barrels as a part of the trash collection system for the park. (On July 5, after the explosion and in front of the caretaker’s house in the park, an arson investigator for the Omaha Police Department found a similar “55-gallon drum, trash-can” bearing a precaution about contents with an “extremely high flash point.”) City employees made frequent trips in the area of pad No. 25 and daily removed trash from the other, differently colored barrel sitting inches from the black barrel. The city’s activity, or more aptly the city’s inactivity, and the barrel’s continued presence at pad No. 25 would lead anyone to conclude there was nothing dangerous in that setting. As testified by Evelyn Stoops, grandmother of the plaintiffs: “Anything in the park is supposed to be safe . . . .” Under the circumstances one would reasonably believe and rely that the city had provided a safe park and not a dump for a discarded, dangerous barrel containing combustible material. “ ‘In determining the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a judgment, it must be considered in the light most favorable to the successful party. Every controverted fact must be resolved in his favor and he is entitled to the benefit of every inference that can reasonably be deduced from the evidence.’ [Citations omitted.] Moreover, under the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, section 23-2406, R.R.S. 1943, the ‘findings of a District Court under the act will not be disturbed on appeal unless they are clearly wrong.’ [Citation omitted.]” Daniels v. Andersen, 195 Neb. 95, 98, 237 N.W.2d 397, 400 (1975). Negligence — the city’s negligence and contributory negligence of the plaintiffs — was a question of fact resolved by the trial court in favor of the plaintiffs. *503That conclusion and determination is not clearly wrong.
For these reasons the judgment of the trial court should have been affirmed.
White and Grant, JJ., join in this dissent.