Court Opinion

ID: 9488152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:37:33.454573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:43.329273
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This is a Federal Tort Claims Act case. As in all such cases, we are required to respect Congress’ insistence that the United States be treated like any other person under state law, even when doing so is somewhat awkward. See 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). In this case, we must apply the Arizona common law regarding the condition and use of land to a landowner whose vast holdings render it an atypical subject under the law. In such cases, it is tempting to simply say that the *1044state law could not possibly be intended to apply to the United States. However, Congress has nonetheless instructed this court to apply the state law to the United States as if it were a private person. In this case, I fear that we do not give sufficient attention to that command and create what appears to be a special amendment to the Arizona common law which has the sole effect of exempting the United States from the landowner’s duty to exercise reasonable care toward those it induces to enter its undeveloped lands in Arizona.
This case requires the application of the invitee-licensee distinction under Arizona law to a person working a mining claim on federal lands pursuant to the inducements created by the federal mining laws. 30 U.S.C. §§ 21 et seq. If Maher is found to be an invitee, then the Government owed him a duty of “reasonable care under the circumstances.” Markowitz v. Arizona Parks Bd., 146 Ariz. 352, 356, 706 P.2d 364, 368 (1985) (en banc).
The majority correctly states the test for determining whether Maher was an invitee by asking “whether the United States acted in a way that induced or encouraged the public, including Maher, to enter the Black Hills Roekhound Area to establish and maintain mining claims.” Opinion at 1042; accord Restatement (Second) of Torts § 332(2) & cmt. d (1965) [hereinafter “Restatement”]. The majority then answers this question, conceding that “Congress sought to create incentives for individuals to explore and develop the resources of the vast public domain.” Opinion at 1042. These incentives are far from trivial1 and clearly constitute an inducement to enter the public domain sufficient to confer invitee status onto the plaintiff. See Restatement § 332 cmt. d. It is furthermore undisputed that the Roekhound Area is a part of the public domain into which Maher was encouraged to enter and, thus, Maher was acting within the geographic scope of the invitation when he was injured. See id. at cmt. 1. This should have ended our inquiry. But instead of remanding to the district court for consideration of the more difficult question of what “reasonable care under the circumstances” requires in the context of a vast wilderness area, the majority creates an exception to Arizona’s law of invitation, the sole purpose of which seems to be to exempt the United States from the duty of reasonable care imposed upon private persons in Arizona who induce the public to enter their lands.
The majority holds that an invitation to enter the public domain in search of mining claims cannot be the sort of invitation contemplated under Arizona law because it simply encompasses too great an area — 725 million acres to be exact. Opinion at 1042. The law of invitation was intended to impose a duty of reasonable care only upon those invited to smaller “particular” or “discrete” par-eels of land, the majority argues, not to areas the size of India. Id. Thus, the majority carves out an exception to Arizona’s tort law for possessors of very large holdings of land, which seemingly applies only to the United States. Because I have no reason to believe that the Arizona courts would create such an exemption and because I believe that Congress specifically instructed this court to abstain from giving the United States special treatment under state law, I dissent.
I
In Markowitz v. Arizona Parks Bd., 146 Ariz. 352, 706 P.2d 364 (1985) (en banc), the Arizona Supreme Court made clear that the size and condition of the land are not relevant to determining the standard of care owed to a visitor. Instead, the Court stated that “[t]he physical circumstances involving size ... and nature of terrain affect the determination of what is reasonable, not the existence of a duty to protect the safety of users_” Id. 706 P.2d at 367.
*1045In Markowitz, the plaintiff was injured in the Lake Havasu Recreational Area, a park comprised of 13,000 acres of desert and lake owned by the federal government and leased to the State of Arizona. David Markowitz had followed a footpath to a cove where he injured himself diving into shallow water. In court, he argued that the State owed him a duty of reasonable care, while the State protested that it owed the plaintiff no duty at all because of the impracticalities of exercising control over the natural environment.
The Arizona Court of Appeals was very concerned about imposing upon the government an onerous duty to control the hazards in the natural environment of large public lands:
Lake Havasu Park is not unlike many natural areas in Arizona where matters of personal safety must necessarily be left to the individual since there are no other reasonable means of protection. In this sense, Lake Havasu Park is very much like other public lands which are open to the public, such a national forest land, national park land, federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and various state lands. This varied, undeveloped natural environment, always inviting, but often dangerous, accounts for more than 75% of the geographical area of the State and is open to the public.... If a duty on the part of the federal or state government to take steps directed toward the safety of the public as it encounters the natural environment were to exist, it is difficult to say where it would start and where it would end.
Markowitz v. Arizona Parks Bd., 146 Ariz. 260, 263, 705 P.2d 937, 940 (App.1984) (emphasis added). The court then stated that “[t]he issue of a land possessor’s duty of care is intertwined with the nature of the use” and held that vastness and natural state of the land relieved the State of any duty toward the park’s visitors. Id. 705 P.2d at 940-11. Thus, like the majority in this case, the Arizona Court of Appeals considered the size and condition of the land in determining the issue of duty and concluded that Arizona law did not impose the usual invitee standard of reasonable care in such circumstances.
On appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court reversed, rejecting the idea that the nature of the land had anything to do with the issue of duty:
[S]uch reasoning is unpersuasive in the present context because the defendant invited and indeed encouraged David and others to come to a parcel of land specifically dedicated to extensive public use and enjoyment. The difficulties involved in taking steps directed toward the safety of the public in natural environments is certainly one factor to consider in determining whether the standard of care has been breached, but we cannot posit a rule of law that the state is relieved from all duty to those invited to use particular portions of public land, no matter what the hazard, simply because the state’s parks are large and their terrain often inhospitable....
706 P.2d at 367.
Like the Arizona Court of Appeals, the majority in this case insists on taking into account the nature of the land to which Maher was invited in determining the duty he was owed. Just as the Court of Appeals attempted to create a special standard of care for wilderness areas, the majority attempts to create a special exception to rules for classifying visitors as invitees. However, the Arizona Supreme Court rebuffed the Court of Appeals’ attempt to exempt the State from its duty of reasonable care. And not even the Court of Appeals was willing to go so far as to deny that the plaintiff was an invitee. Significantly, everyone in Markow-itz — including the defendant and the Court of Appeals — agreed that the plaintiff was an invitee, even though the land was vast and untamed. See 705 P.2d at 939 (“There is no dispute that members of the public, including the injured plaintiff, were permitted freely to enter upon the lands and waters of Lake Havasu Park_ As such, there are classified as ‘invitees’ for purposes of tort law.”); 706 P.2d at 367 (“The parties agree that David was an ‘invitee’ on state land.... That relationship imposes an obligation to take reasonable precautions for David’s safety.”).
In acknowledging that one encouraged to enter a public park is an invitee, despite the *1046size and natural state of the park, Markowitz is in accord with numerous other decisions that have considered visitors to state and federal parks to be invitees and have applied the general negligence standard of reasonable care to such cases.2
II
The majority’s attempts to sidestep the clear implications of Markowitz are unconvincing. First, the majority implies that Markowitz's discussion of the relationship between the state of the environment and the standard of care is not good law because the state legislature subsequently enacted a recreational users statute that reduced the standard of care for recreational visitors. Opinion at 1042 n. 4. However, as the majority admits, this statute is irrelevant to Maher’s claim to be a non-recreational invitee pursuing a mining claim. Furthermore, the statute cannot be read as overruling the Arizona Supreme Court’s statement of the common law in Markowitz, since the statute was enacted before Markowitz was decided.3 More importantly, there is no indication that in enacting the recreational user statute the legislature intended to overhaul the invitee-licensee case law outside the context of recreation. Instead, the legislature chose to carve out an exception to the common law for recreational use of land, leaving undisturbed the rest of the common law doctrine discussed in Markowitz.
Second, while the majority emphasizes the vastness of the public domain — which is clearly many times larger than the area at issue in Markowitz — this does not make Markowitz inapplicable to this case. Both cases involve a government entity opening up very large areas of public land in a way that indicates that “the public will not merely be tolerated, but is expected and desired to come.” Restatement at § 332 cmt. d. The majority may think that Markowitz is distinguishable because while a 13,000 acre state park is very large, the public domain is very, very large and cannot possibly be subject to the same legal standard of care as the merely very large park at issue in Markowitz. However, I can think of no reason for subjecting a 13,000-acre park to a greater standard of care than the 725 million acres of public domain. At some point, large is large and the marginal increase in size is irrelevant to the question of whether it is appropriate to impose a duty of reasonable care upon the land’s owner. Furthermore, as I shall discuss in more detail below, even if there were some precautions that were feasible in a 13,-000-acre park, but were impracticable in the larger public domain, the Arizona Supreme Court has indicated that this fact is taken into account in deciding what constitutes reasonable care under the circumstances, not in deciding whether the owner is absolved of the duty of reasonable care altogether. Markowitz, 706 P.2d at 367, 369.
Finally, the majority also attempts to distinguish Markowitz on the ground that the invitation in that case was to a “specific site,” whereas the United States’ invitation to Maher to explore the entire public domain was less “particular.” Opinion at 1042-43 & n. 4. Thus, the majority states that the congressional inducement to enter the public domain *1047does not count as an invitation because it lacks sufficient “geographic specificity” since it is not extended to a “discrete piece of property.” Id. at 1042. While the principle upon which the majority relies is far from clear, it appears to be stating that although an effective invitation may be extended to very large parcels of land,4 one may not be extended to numerous parcels of land, at least not through a general invitation. Thus, had Congress limited the mining laws to opening up the Rockhound Area to prospecting, the majority would apparently think Maher was an invitee. See id. at 1042 n. 4. Furthermore, had Congress issued separate invitations for each parcel of the public domain, including the Rockhound Area, I presume the majority would not hold each invitation ineffective simply because it was made in conjunction with numerous other specific and particular invitations. Thus, it appears that the fatal flaw in the congressional invitation here was that Congress used the shorthand term “public domain” rather than explicitly listing each piece of property it wished to encourage the public to enter and explore.
This is a novel proposition, created by the majority without any prompting from the parties or the Arizona courts. The opinion cites no policy rationale to explain why the Arizona courts would create such a “geographic specificity” rule, much less any cases actually employing this distinction. The only authority the majority cites to at all is the Restatement § 332 cmt. 1. This part of the Restatement, entitled “Scope of invitation,” makes clear that “a visitor has the status of an invitee only while he is on the part of the land to which his invitation extends — or in other words, the part of the land which the possessor gives him reason to believe that his presence is desired for the purpose for which he has come.” Id. But this requirement is of no importance to this case and does not support the notion that only invitations to discrete parcels of land can confer invitee status upon visitors. This passage of the Restatement is concerned with the visitor’s obedience to the limitations the land owner has placed on its invitation. So long as the geographic scope of the invitation is clear, there is no reason to think that a general invitation to visit a number of discrete parcels of land should be ineffective to confer invitee status upon those who respond to the invitation. Certainly the Restatement does not suggest otherwise.
The only plausible rationale for the majority’s requirement is that a generalized invitation to enter a variety of separate parcels of land results in an invitation that covers a very large area of land over which the owner cannot effectively or economically exercise much control. Therefore, the majority may reason, such a broad invitation cannot operate as “an implied representation, assurance, or understanding that reasonable care has been used to prepare the premises, and make them safe for [the public’s] reception.” Opinion at 1043 (quoting Restatement § 332 cmt. a). But this is just another way of saying that no one can ever be owed the invitee standard of reasonable care in a large wilderness area, precisely the assertion rejected by the Arizona Supreme Court in Markowitz. There, the Court made clear that the mere act of encouraging the public to enter a wilderness area operates as an implied representation that reasonable care had been taken. 706 P.2d at 367. Once such an inducement has been made, the owner incurs the duty of reasonable care whether such care has been exercised or not. Thus, the ability of the government to control a large natural environment has. no relevance to the duty imposed on the landowner who encourages the public to enter its lands, but rather is relevant to deciding what constitutes reasonable care under the circumstances:
[T]he court of appeals assumes that any duty found to exist would necessarily be absolute, and would thus require the state to patrol the entire wilderness area of the state to discover and warn of all conceivable dangers, no matter how open and obvi*1048ous the risk or how remote or inaccessible the area. Such an interpretation of the concept of duty is incorrect....
.... What is reasonable on the one hand or negligent on the other will depend on the circumstances — was the danger open and obvious, was it natural or artificial, was the park small or large, was the area often used or remote and unaccessi-ble? Were precautions easy to take or difficult and expensive? All these are factors which determine the reasonableness of the defendant’s conduct; they are questions of negligence, not duty.
Id. at 367, 369.
The requirement that the United States exercise reasonable care under the circumstances in the administration of its extensive landholdings is neither new nor radical. In fact, for more than a decade, the United States has owed a duty of reasonable care to every person entering the majority of its lands regardless of invitee or licensee status. Since the late 1970s, Alaska, Colorado, and California — which contain more than half of federal landholdings in the country5 — have imposed a uniform duty of reasonable care under the circumstances on all landowners regardless of the status of the visitor. See Webb v. Sitka, 561 P.2d 731 (Alaska 1977); Mile High Fence Co. v. Radovich, 175 Colo. 537, 489 P.2d 308 (1971); Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561 (1968). This development has not resulted in catastrophic liability for the United States, nor has it led Congress to exempt itself from the tort law of these states. It is not unthinkable, therefore, that the Arizona courts would apply the invitee analysis in a straightforward manner and hold that the United States owed Maher a duty of reasonable care as an invitee.
Just what the duty of reasonable care under the circumstances required in this case is not at issue in this appeal. I may speculate, however, that it cannot possibly include maintenance of every access road in the Arizona public domain. Whether or not the road upon which Markowitz was injured was so well-traveled, and its unmaintained condition so concealed, that failure to post warning would be unreasonable, is another matter and one that should have been left for trial.
We are compelled to apply the law of Arizona to the facts of this ease, treating the United States as a private person. The majority has misapplied Arizona law by creating a peculiar new twist in the invitee-licensee analysis that has no foundation in tort law and no function other than to treat the United States differently than other landowners in Arizona.

. In fact, the generosity of these incentives has been severely criticized. See, e.g., Michael Braunstein, Natural Environments and Natural Resources: An Economic Analysis and New Interpretation of the General Mining Law, 32 UCLA L.Rev. 1133, 1150-51 ("In order to 'excite' people to find minerals, the law offers a reward that exceeds the value of the object sought: the finder keeps the minerals, and can purchase the land in which they are found for less than market value.... Not only is the reward offered to prospectors by the mining law too much, it is much too much”).

. See Harmon v. United States, 532 F.2d 669, 671, 672 (9th Cir.1975) (treating whitewater rafters on Salmon River running through national forest as invitees); Ashley v. United States, 326 F.2d 499 (8th Cir.1964) (applying invitee standard of care to visitor to Yellowstone National Park); Trowell v. United States, 526 F.Supp. 1009, 1013 (M.D.Fla.1981) (holding that visitor to Alexander Springs Recreation Area was an invitee); Henretig v. United States, 490 F.Supp. 398, 403 (S.D.Fla.1980) (holding that hiker injured on unmaintained footpath in Yellowstone was an invitee); Middaugh v. United States, 293 F.Supp. 977, 980 (D.Wyo.1968) (holding that camper at Yellowstone was an invitee); Adams v. United States, 239 F.Supp. 503, 506 (E.D.Okla.1965) (holding that visitor to Platt National Park was invitee); see also Mandel v. United States, 793 F.2d 964, 968 (8th Cir.1986) (applying "reasonable care” standard, under Arkansas law, to diving injury in 60,000 acre national park containing the 130-mile-long Buffalo National River); Miller v. United States, 597 F.2d 614, 616-17 (7th Cir.1979) (applying "reasonable care” standard, under Illinois law, to diving injury in 7,000 acre lake in Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge).

. The statute was enacted in 1983, while Mar-kowitz was decided in 1985. See 1983 Ariz.Sess. Laws Ch. 82 § 1. The statute was not applied to that case, apparently because the accident occurred in 1975, prior to the statute's enactment. See Markowitz, 706 P.2d at 366.

. The majority concedes that an invitation to visit a particular national park is an effective invitation, even though some national parks are very large and are left in a wilderness state. See Opinion at 1042-43. See also George C. Cog-gins, Public Natural Resources Law § 2.03[2][b] (noting that Yellowstone National Park contains over 2 million acres); Ashley v. United States, 326 F.2d at 500 (affirming district court’s holding that visitor to Yellowstone was an invitee).

. As the majority notes, over half of federal lands are located in Alaska. See Opinion at 1042 n. 3.