Court Opinion

ID: 9781195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:22:03.392635+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:21.046533
License: Public Domain

ANDREWS, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Although no one saw what happened, there is evidence that an eight-foot-long wild alligator present in a lagoon at The Landings *331residential community attacked and killed Gwyneth Williams as she walked alone at night near the lagoon. Ms. Williams’s heirs and estate sued the owners of the lagoon and abutting areas, The Landings Association, Inc. and The Landings Club, Inc., to recover wrongful death and other damages under various theories of liability. I fully concur in Division 3 of the majority opinion finding that the owners are entitled to summary judgment on the claim that they are liable for maintaining a nuisance. I respectfully dissent because I conclude that the owners are also entitled to summary judgment on the claim under OCGA § 51-3-1 that they are liable for negligently failing to exercise ordinary care to protect Ms. Williams from the alleged attack.21
At the time of the alleged attack, Ms. Williams was visiting at the house owned by her daughter and son-in-law at The Landings, a gated residential community of about 8,500 residents located on 4,500 acres on Skidaway Island, a coastal barrier island near Savannah. The land on which The Landings was developed included natural lagoons and swamps with fresh and brackish water and was bordered by saltwater marshes, all of which was prime habitat for alligators indigenous to the area. Wild alligators have lived on the land now occupied by The Landings before The Landings was developed, during the time The Landings was developed in the 1970s, and to this day. To develop The Landings, swampy areas were drained and then shaped by the developers into a system of about 150 lagoons, including the lagoon where Ms. Williams was allegedly attacked by the alligator. The lagoons serve the necessary function of providing storm water management and drainage for The Landings and preventing those areas from reverting back to swamp. Before the lagoon system was built, alligators lived in or near the swampy areas and moved from these areas to nesting areas in nearby marshes. After the lagoons were built, alligators continued to live in the lagoons where the swamps were before, and moved across The Landings from lagoon to lagoon and to nearby marshes.
This history makes clear that alligators have existed at the site of The Landings before and since it was developed because they are *332indigenous “wildlife,” as defined in OCGA § 27-1-2 (77). As set forth in OCGA § 27-1-3 (b), these alligators are wildlife and are not owned or controlled by The Landings Association, The Landings Club, or any other private entity.
The ownership of, jurisdiction over, and control of all wildlife, as defined in this title, are declared to be in the State of Georgia, in its sovereign capacity, to be controlled, regulated, and disposed of in accordance with this title. Wildlife is held in trust by the state for the benefit of its citizens and shall not be reduced to private ownership except as specifically provided for in this title. All wildlife of the State of Georgia is declared to be within the custody of the [Georgia Department of Natural Resources] for purposes of management and regulation in accordance with this title. However, the State of Georgia, the department, and the board shall be immune from suit and shall not be liable for any damage to life, person, or property caused directly or indirectly by any wildlife.
OCGA § 27-1-3 (b). Pursuant to OCGA § 27-1-22, only the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and persons authorized by contract with the DNR, have the authority to take, capture, or transport the indigenous wild alligators at The Landings.
Despite the presence of a wild alligator population living and moving about in The Landings since it was developed in the 1970s, there had never been an alligator attack on a person at The Landings until the alleged attack on Ms. Williams in October 2007. No warnings about alligators were posted on-site at the lagoons or elsewhere in The Landings property, but The Landings Association warned residents in printed publications and on-line that wild alligators at The Landings could be dangerous. Neither The Landings Association nor The Landings Club attempted to capture, remove, or otherwise control or restrict the movement of wild alligators owned by the State and under the custody and management of the DNR. The Landings Association policy was to ask the DNR to remove alligators over seven feet long or any aggressive alligators on the basis that larger or aggressive alligators could pose a danger. No effort was made by The Landings Association or The Landings Club to inspect the lagoons or other areas to look for large or aggressive alligators — the policy was to ask the DNR to remove these alligators as they were seen and reported. By permit, the DNR authorized a trapper to remove the alligators. The policy was also that residents could call DNR directly to report an alligator they thought should be removed, or they could report an alligator to The *333Landings Association, which would confirm the location of the alligator and then cedi the DNR to ask for removal. Under this policy, numerous alligators have been removed from The Landings by the DNR-authorized trapper.
Since May 2000, Ms. Williams’s daughter and son-in-law owned a house at The Landings where Ms. Williams had visited over the years on many occasions, sometimes staying for two or three months at a time. Ms. Williams was housesitting while her daughter and son-in-law were away when the alleged alligator attack occurred in October 2007. Behind the house, a park-like common area bordered lagoon 15 on one side and a golf course bordered it on the other side. The lagoon itself was about 300 feet behind the house. There is evidence to support the contention that Ms. Williams was walking alone somewhere in these areas near the lagoon around 9:00 on an October night when she was attacked by the alligator. Ms. Williams’s daughter and son-in-law testified that they were aware of alligators at The Landings and in lagoon 15. Ms. Williams’s son-in-law remembered Ms. Williams being with him on one or two occasions at The Landings when they saw an alligator while riding in his car and he stopped the car so she could look at the alligator. As to Ms. Williams’s knowledge and appreciation of the danger posed by alligators at The Landings, her son-in-law testified:
Q: And to your knowledge then Ms. Williams was aware that there were alligators in the lagoons at The Landings?
A: Yes.
Q: Did she ever comment to you about — for instance, I have a fear of snakes. Did she have any fear of alligators or anything like that that you knew of?
A: Not specifically, I mean, other than, you know, the normal one in respecting wild animals.
Q: All right. Did you ever have any discussion with her or any comments about how one should be around alligators, for instance don’t feed the alligators, don’t get too close, anything like this?
A: No. There was never — quite frankly, there was never any reason to. I mean she was an intelligent person. She would — there was no question in my mind that — I guess I have to answer that as it’s not like talking to a five year old child . . . stay away from alligators.
Similarly, Ms. Williams’s son testified that, while visiting with his sister at The Landings, he recalled driving at The Landings with his mother when they saw an alligator. He testified: “[W]e did see one on the side of the road. And I do recall my mother saying that, you know, *334something to the effect that she did not like alligators, she would not want to go anywhere near them.” Ms. Williams knew that the lagoon with alligators was located behind the house where she was staying.
These facts require application of premises liability law in conjunction with the doctrine of “animals ferae naturae” relating to a land owner’s duty to protect an invitee from an attack by an indigenous wild animal on the premises. Under OCGA § 51-3-1, a premises owner has a duty to exercise ordinary care to protect invitees from unreasonable risks of harm on the premises of which the owner has superior knowledge. Robinson v. Kroger Co., 268 Ga. 735, 740 (493 SE2d 403) (1997). This duty does not require a premises owner to ensure the safety of invitees, but to take “reasonable precautions to protect invitees from dangers foreseeable from the arrangement or use of the premises.” Id. The doctrine of “animals ferae naturae,” meaning animals of a wild nature, recognizes that the state rather than the premises owner owns and controls indigenous wild animals on the premises, and provides in general that “a landowner cannot be held liable for the acts of animals ferae naturae, that is, indigenous wild animals, occurring on his or her property unless the landowner has actually reduced the wild animals to possession or control, or introduced a non-indigenous animal into the area.” Nicholson v. Smith, 986 SW2d 54, 60 (Tex. App. 1999). “Generally, the law does not require the owner or possessor of land to anticipate (the) presence of or guard (an) invitee against harm from animals ferae naturae. 3 CJS Supp., Animals, § 143, citing Gowen v. Willenborg, 366 SW2d 695 (Tex. Civ. App. [1963]).” Williams v. Gibbs, 123 Ga. App. 677, 678 (182 SE2d 164) (1971) (no duty to protect against indigenous wild rattlesnake where none had previously been seen on the premises). The basis for application of the doctrine in premises liability cases sounding in negligence is that, because wild animals are generally not predictable or controllable, a premises owner generally has no duty to protect an invitee from a wild animal attack that was not reasonably foreseeable or that could not have been prevented by taking reasonable precautions. Booth v. State, 83 P3d 61, 65 (Ariz. App. 2004).
No alligator had ever attacked a person at The Landings prior to the alleged attack on Ms. Williams. Even so, the numbers of alligators and proximity to people at The Landings; the warnings provided to residents regarding alligators; the policy of requesting that the DNR remove large or aggressive alligators; and the numbers of alligators removed by the DNR pursuant to the policy, provides evidence from which a jury could conclude that the danger of an alligator attack on a person, though minimal, was reasonably foreseeable to the owners. Assuming the danger was foreseeable, the issue is whether the owners violated a duty to exercise ordinary care *335to protect Ms. Williams from the alleged alligator attack.
Exactly what constitutes “ordinary care” varies with the circumstances and the magnitude of the danger to be guarded against. Since it is impossible to prescribe definite rules in advance for every combination of circumstances which may arise, the details of the standard must be filled in each particular case. But, to be negligent, the conduct must be unreasonable in light of the recognizable risk of harm. The particular standard of care to be applied and whether the owner breached that standard are usually issues to be decided by a jury. However, these issues may be decided by the court in plain and palpable cases where reasonable minds cannot differ as to the conclusion to be reached.
(Citations and punctuation omitted.) Lau’s Corp. v. Haskins, 261 Ga. 491, 493 (405 SE2d 474) (1991). The doctrine of animals ferae naturae informs this issue by recognizing that the nature of the risk posed by indigenous wild alligators is often unpredictable and uncontrollable. The presence of indigenous wild alligators in the midst of The Landings obviously posed a generalized risk of an alligator attack on a person, but the magnitude of the risk was minimal given that no attack had ever occurred in the history of The Landings from its development in the 1970s until the alleged attack on Ms. Williams in 2007. There is no evidence that the lagoons created a dangerous condition which caused alligators to act in unexpected or abnormal ways or caused alligators to be where they were not normally found. See Nicholson, 986 SW2d at 62-63; compare Carlson v. State, 598 P2d 969 (Alaska 1979) (factual issue where wild bear attack occurred at location where bears were attracted by uncollected garbage). To the contrary, the lagoons at The Landings were created and maintained to provide necessary drainage and were shaped from pre-existing swampy areas in prime alligator habitat. Pursuant to OCGA § 27-1-3 (b), ownership, management, and control of the indigenous wild alligators was in the State with custody delegated to the DNR. In apparent consideration of the difficulty of exercising these duties, the State and the DNR were granted statutory immunity in OCGA § 27-1-3 (b) against any liability “for any damage to life, person, or property caused directly or indirectly by any wildlife.” Conversely, the owners had no right to control, manage, or remove the alligators at The Landings. The lack of control by the owners, along with the fact that the alligator population was constantly moving in and out of the lagoons and in and out of The Landings into adjacent marshes, makes it unreasonable to find that ordinary care imposed a duty on the owners to *336continuously patrol The Landings to look for and remove all large or potentially dangerous alligators in the shifting population. There is no evidence that the owners had prior knowledge of the existence or location of the eight-foot-long wild alligator which allegedly attacked Ms. Williams, and ordinary care did not require them to find and remove the alligator prior to the attack. It is also not reasonable, and possibly at odds with DNR custody and management of wildlife, to find that the duty of ordinary care required the owners to fence or barricade the alligators into the lagoons, or to otherwise fence off The Landings from the alligators. To find that the duty of care required the owners to undertake these or similar measures to attempt to eliminate or reduce the risk of a wild alligator attack is tantamount to imposing a duty to exercise extraordinary care and making the owners ensurers of invitees’ safety.22 The duty imposed on owners under OCGA § 51-3-1 is to exercise ordinary care, not extraordinary care, and it does not require owners to ensure the safety of invitees.
The facts in this case make clear and palpable that the precautions taken by the owners to guard against the minimal risk of an alligator attack were reasonable in light of the nature of the risk — the owners warned residents of the presence of wild alligators at The Landings and pursued a policy of requesting the DNR, which had custody of and managed the alligators, to remove large or aggressive alligators as they were seen and reported. Even though Ms. Williams was not a resident and there is no evidence that she received the warnings about alligators given to residents of The Landings, she was aware of the risk. Ms. Williams visited frequently at The Landings staying for months at a time, and she was well aware of the presence of wild alligators at The Landings and in the lagoons, specifically knew that alligators were in the lagoon where she was walking on the night of the alleged attack, and appreciated the fact that wild alligators are dangerous. Although many circumstances may require an owner to warn an invitee of a latent risk, there is no requirement to warn about an obvious risk which the invitee knows about. Lau’s Corp., 261 Ga. at 493. Because I find as a matter of law that the owners exercised ordinary care to keep Ms. Williams reasonably safe from the risk of a wild alligator attack, they were entitled to summary judgment.
Finally, even assuming the owners could be found negligent for failing to exercise ordinary care to protect Ms. Williams from the *337alleged alligator attack, I conclude that her knowledge of the risk precluded recovery and entitled the owners to summary judgment. Because the fundamental basis for imposing liability on an owner under OCGA § 51-3-1 is the owner’s superior knowledge of the risk, no liability can be imposed where the invitee had equal knowledge of the risk and could have avoided the consequences of the defendant’s negligence with the exercise of ordinary care. Davis v. Crum, 263 Ga. App. 682, 684 (588 SE2d 849) (2003). When Ms. Williams walked alone at night near the lagoon she was aware of the risk that she could encounter a dangerous wild alligator, regardless of whether she could anticipate the exact size of the alligator.23 “[A]lthough the issue of a plaintiffs exercise of due diligence for his own safety is ordinarily a question for the jury, it may be summarily adjudicated where the plaintiffs knowledge of the risk is clear and palpable.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Id. at 685. Ms. Williams had equal knowledge of the presence of wild alligators at The Landings and in the lagoons and knew that wild alligators are dangerous. By walking alone at night near the lagoon, she either assumed the risk of encountering a dangerous wild alligator in the dark or failed to exercise ordinary care to avoid it. Clark v. Carla Gay Dress Co., 178 Ga. App. 157, 159 (342 SE2d 468) (1986).
Decided March 25, 2011
Reconsideration denied April 14, 2011
Barrow & Ballew, Walter W. Ballew Ill, Travis D. Windsor, for The Landings Association, Inc.
Savage & Turner, Robert B. Turner, C. Dorian Britt, David M. Conner, Daniel B. Snipes, for Williams et al.
Forbes, Foster & Pool, Morton G. Forbes, Johnny A. Foster, for The Landings Club, Inc.
I am authorized to state that Judge Doyle joins in this opinion.

 There is evidence showing that the alleged attack occurred in or near lagoon number 15. The Landings Association and The Landings Club each own a portion of lagoon 15. The Landings Association is the homeowners association at The Landings and owns common areas, including a common area bordering lagoon 15 and the portion of the lagoon abutting that area. The Landings Club owns golf and other recreational facilities at The Landings, including a golf course bordering lagoon 15 and the portion of the lagoon abutting the course. The Landings Association maintained all of lagoon 15 under a contract with The Landings Club. As set forth in the majority opinion, for the purpose of these appeals, The Landings Association and The Landings Club are sometimes jointly referred to as the owners, and it is assumed, without deciding, that Ms. Williams was an invitee of the owners at the time of the alleged attack.

 As members of The Landings Association, the resident homeowners at The Landings could, of course, conclude that extraordinary measures to reduce the risk of an alligator attack are worth undertaking.

 I find no evidence to support the claim that Ms. Williams saw only “small” alligators at The Landings. The record does not show the size of the alligator or alligators she saw while riding in a car with her son or son-in-law. Ms. Williams’s son-in-law, who was riding with Ms. Williams on one occasion when they saw an alligator, testified only that he did not believe he had seen any alligators at The Landings over seven feet long, but he conceded “it’s hard to tell the size from a distance.”