Court Opinion

ID: 9682490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:11:58.267592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:39.664023
License: Public Domain

KILGARLIN, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the result reached by the court. However, I regret that the court has chosen to avoid consideration of the premise liability doctrine by opting for an easier path of relying on a city ordinance for the duty determination. Given an opportunity to render impotent one of the last vestiges of feudalism in our common law, we nevertheless succumb to the blandishments of judicial torpidity. In doing so, we carve but another modification to the already exception-ridden premise liability doctrine. Rather than relying on the happenstance of city actions and other judicially sculpted exceptions, I would case aside doctrinal distinctions as the primary determinative of a landowner’s liability and substitute a general duty of ordinary care under the circumstances.
The present law of landowner liability has its origins in the feudal period when a man’s worth was measured by his property. A landowner was then sovereign within his domain and had total liberty to do with his land as he pleased. F. Bohlen, Studies in the Law of Torts 163 (1926). In the nineteenth century, before tort principles were widely recognized or applied, the English judiciary grew conscious of the danger that landowner immunity posed to community safety; yet the judges were reluctant to leave the liability determination to a jury of potential land entrants. Consequently, the judges created an entrant classification scheme to circumscribe the jury’s tendencies to find landowners liable. The Industrial Revolution ushered in a greater number of accidents and the English courts began to apply emerging tort principles to the entrant categorization scheme. Marsh, The History and Comparative Law of Invitees, Licensees and Trespassers, 69 L.Q.Rev. 182 (1953); Recent Development, Torts—Abrogation of Common-Law Entrant Classes of Trespasser, Licensee, and Invitee, 25 Vand.L. Rev. 623, 624 (1972). These classifications were introduced into the United States over one hundred years ago in Sweeney v. Old Colony & Newport R.R., 92 Mass (10 Allen) 368 (1865). Since that time the majority of American jurisdictions, including Texas, have incorporated the entrant categorization system into substantive tort law.
It is a system capable of producing anomalies that are at once both absurd and harsh. Just picture the court of appeals in this case groping for a designation for a ten year old girl who has been forcibly dragged off the street into an apartment complex. Then, out of obeisance to this outmoded entrant characterization doctrine, that court concluded that little Rhonda was after all a trespasser. 675 S.W.2d at 586. As a trespasser, Mr. Property’s duty to her was simply not to willfully injure her. Harsh, yes! Absurd? Substitute the facts but a little, and assume Rhonda was a resident of Chalmette Apart*552ments, dragged out of a hallway into a vacant apartment and thrice raped. Under such a tableau, the whole duty concept changes. Yet, but for an almost irrelevant municipal ordinance, this court would maintain such duty fictions.
The recent trend of the law, which I would join, has been away from basing a landowner’s liability on his visitor’s artificially determined purpose of entry. England, the progenitor of this feudal vestige, adopted the Occupiers Liability Act of 1957, which imposes upon landowners a “common duty of care” toward all visitors, excluding trespassers. 5 & 6 Eliz. 2, ch. 31 (1957). The United States has been slower to annihilate these archaic distinctions. But, in Kermarec v. Compagnie Generate Transatlantique, 358 U.S. 625, 630, 79 S.Ct. 406, 409, 3 L.Ed.2d 550 (1959), the United States Supreme Court recognized the inadequacies of the classifications and refused to extend the system to admiralty. Id. at 631, 79 S.Ct. at 410. The Court explained that American courts have carved numerous exceptions to the classification system to mitigate its harshness. The Court-acknowledged the system’s difficulties:
[Ejven within a single jurisdiction, the classifications and subclassifications bred by the common law have produced confusion and conflict. As new distinctions have been spawned, older ones have become obscured. Through this semantic morass the common law has moved, unevenly and with hesitation, towards “imposing on owners and occupiers a single duty of reasonable care in all the circumstances.”
Id. at 630-31, 79 S.Ct. at 410.
Exceptions to the classification structure are rampant in the jurisdictions which still adhere to this system. See Note, Tort Liability of Owners and Possessors of Land — A Single Standard of Reasonable Care Under the Circumstances Towards Invitees and Licensees, 33 Ark.L.Rev. 194, 197 (1979). Michigan recognizes an exception for social guests. Preston v. Sleziak, 16 Mich.App. 18, 167 N.W.2d 477 (1969). Kentucky modified the traditional categories by increasing a landowner’s duty to known and frequent trespassers on a limited area. Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Spoonamore’s Adm’r., 278 Ky. 673, 129 S.W.2d 175 (1939). Texas is no different. In this state, for example, we have excepted from these categorizations attractive nuisances (Banker v. McLaughlin, 146 Tex. 434, 208 S.W.2d 843 [1949]); dangerous conditions obvious to the owner (State v. Tennison, 509 S.W.2d 560 [Tex.1974]), and anticipated trespassers if the landowner engages in a dangerous activity (Gulf, C & S.F. Ry. Co. v. Russell, 125 Tex. 443, 82 S.W.2d 948 [Tex.Comm’n App.1935, opinion adopted]).
In 1968, California became the first state to eradicate common law distinctions of land entrants. That state’s supreme court held that landowners would be required to exercise ordinary care under the circumstances regardless of the tort victim’s classification. The California court recognized that the entrant’s status could affect the liability question but it would only affect liability in determining what “ordinary care under the circumstances” required. The court reasoned:
A man’s life or limb does not become less worthy of protection by the law nor a loss less worthy of compensation under the law because he has come upon the land of another without permission or with permission but without a business purpose. Reasonable people do not ordinarily vary their conduct depending upon such matters, and to focus upon the status of the injured party as a trespasser, licensee, or invitee in order to determine the question whether the landowner has a duty of care, is contrary to our modern social mores and humanitarian values. The common law rules. obscure rather than illuminate the proper considerations which should govern determination of the question of duty.
Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 104, 443 P.2d 561, 568 (1968).
Since Rowland, eight other jurisdictions have held that the invitee, licensee, trespasser categories are not determinative, *553and that landowners are subject to a duty of ordinary care under the circumstances. Hawaii was the first state to follow California’s lead. Holding that there is no logical relationship between the entrant classifications and the exercise of reasonable care for the safety of others, Hawaii abolished the outdated trinity in Pickard v. City and County of Honolulu, 51 Hawaii 134, 452 P.2d 445 (1969). Colorado was the next state to institute a standard of reasonable care under the circumstances to avoid harsh results and judicial confusion. Mile High Fence Co. v. Radovich, 175 Colo. 537, 489 P.2d 308 (1971). The District of Columbia soon joined those states casting out the archaic troika. Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, 152 U.S.App.D.C. 86, 469 F.2d 97, cert. denied, 412 U.S. 939, 93 S.Ct. 2774, 37 L.Ed.2d 399 (1973). Five years later, five other states had also concluded that the entrant classification scheme was no longer viable. See Mariorenzi v. Joseph DiPonte, Inc., 114 R.I. 294, 333 A.2d 127 (1975); Cates v. Beauregard Electric Cooperative, Inc., 328 So.2d 367 (La.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 833, 97 S.Ct. 97, 50 L.Ed.2d 98 (1976); Ouellette v. Blanchard, 116 N.H. 552, 364 A.2d 631 (1976); Basso v. Miller, 40 N.Y.2d 233, 386 N.Y.S.2d 564, 352 N.E.2d 868 (1976); and, Webb v. City and Borough of Sitka, 561 P.2d 731 (Alaska 1977). Six jurisdictions have applied a uniform standard of care for invitees and licensees while excluding trespassers. See Peterson v. Balach, 294 Minn. 161, 199 N.W.2d 639 (1972); Wood v. Camp, 284 So.2d 691 (Fla.1973); Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693, 297 N.E.2d 43 (1973); Antoniewicz v. Reszcyniski, 70 Wis.2d 836, 236 N.W.2d 1 (1975); O’Leary v. Coenen, 251 N.W.2d 746 (N.D.1977); Poulin v. Colby College, 402 A.2d 846 (Me.1979). True, many states have rejected abandonment of premise liability standards, but only fourteen states have done so by decisions from their courts of last resort.
In casting aside the premise liability classification, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia placed heavy reliance on the decreased prestige of the landowner in our society. The court said:
We believe that the common law classifications are now equally alien to modern tort law, primarily because they establish immunities from liability which no longer comport with accepted values and common experience. Perhaps the protection afforded to landowners by these rules was once perceived as necessary in view of the sparseness of land settlements, and the inability of owners to inspect or maintain distant holdings. The prestige and dominance of the landowning class in the nineteenth century contributed to the common law’s emphasis on the economic and social importance of free use and exploitation of land over and above the personal safety of those who qualified as trespassers or licensees:
Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, Inc., 469 F.2d at 101. That court also recognized the importance of resource allocation in, our society and decided that, absent legislative action, the jury is in the best position to allocate society’s resources regarding personal injury. Classifying landowner liability decisions as “moral and empirical judgments,” the court reasoned that the community representatives which comprise the jury are best qualified to handle these questions. Id. at 102.
Resource allocation was only one of the bases for that court’s destruction of the land entrant categories. The court also relied on the genius of the common law to adapt to societal, economic and moral changes:
Legal classifications such as trespasser and licensee are judicial creations which should be cast aside when they are no longer useful as controlling tools for the jury. The principle of stare decisis was not meant to keep a stranglehold on developments which are responsive to new values, experiences, and circumstances. In our opinion, the time has come to put an end to our total reliance on these common law labels and to allow the finder of fact to focus on whether the landowner has exercised “reasonable care under all the circumstances.” That stan*554dard contains the flexibility necessary to allow the jury to take account of the infinite variety of fact situations which affect the foreseeability of presence and injury, and the balance of values which determines the allocation of the costs and risks of human injury.
Id. at 105.
Rather than create further refinements and exceptions to the premise liability doctrine, we should abolish it. The classifications of invitee, licensee and trespasser are judicial dinosaurs which served a purpose long ago when society’s values placed great emphasis on a man’s property holdings. That day is gone, and with it the public-be-damned attitude of J.P. Morgan. Today’s society places a great emphasis on human safety. In accommodating this modern trend, however, I do not advocate that trespassers who enter with an intent to commit a crime be allowed to recover and1 would hold that a landowner as a matter of law has no duty to such a trespasser other than as currently exists.
This case presents a perfect opportunity for casting aside one of the last remnants of a doctrine whose roots are founded in the feudal system and which has no place in our modern society. This court should follow the modern trend and abolish this antiquated doctrine. For the above reasons, I respectfully concur.