Court Opinion

ID: 9707494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:13:25.018082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:41:29.814648
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
dissenting. According to the majority, the Missisquoi Cemetery Association and its president may be held liable for failing to anticipate and prevent three boys from discovering a laddér in an old railroad bed off cemetery grounds, hauling the ladder across the grounds, positioning it over the cemetery’s fence and against an otherwise unclimbable tree located on neighboring property adjoining the cemetery, scaling the ladder and hammering on a branch overhanging the fence in an effort to build a tree fort, and causing the branch to break, resulting in one of the boys falling and becoming impaled upon the fence. I do not agree that liability may be imposed on defendants for not anticipating this tragic but unforeseeable accident, particularly considering that neither the president of the Association nor the cemetery’s caretaker ever saw any children climbing trees or building tree forts on cemetery grounds during the preceding fifteen years. I would hold as a matter of law that, viewing the undisputed material facts in a light most favorable to plaintiffs, a reasonable jury could not conclude that the cemetery breached any duty owed to the decedent or the plaintiffs under the facts and circumstances of this case; accordingly, I would affirm the superior court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of defendants. On all other issues, I join the majority’s opinion.
The majority’s analysis in this case is faulty in several respects. First, the boys were plainly trespassers on cemetery property when the accident occurred. In the majority’s view, because the decedent fell from a tree located just outside the cemetery, the boys were not trespassers. This conclusion ignores the undisputed facts that the boys brought a ladder onto cemetery property and placed the foot of the ladder on cemetery land as a means of climbing the tree, and that the decedent had climbed out onto a branch overhanging cemetery property at the time he fell on top of the fence, which the cemetery *490owned. Given these facts, the boys were trespassers under any common-sense definition of the term, including the Restatement definition accepted by the majority: a trespasser is one “who enters or remains” upon another’s land without consent or privilege. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 329 (1965) (emphasis added). The instant case is very different from the cases cited by the majority, wherein persons who had never entered the defendants’ property were injured after running into or falling against the defendants’ fence.
Although I differ with the majority’s conclusion that the boys were not trespassers, I agree that we need not address questions such as whether to abandon status classifications in landowner-liability law, whether to adopt an attractive-nuisance doctrine, or whether to apply any exceptions to the willful-and-wanton standard for trespassers under the circumstances of this case. In short, I concur with the majority’s conclusion that we can assume that defendants owed decedent and plaintiffs a duty of ordinary care with respect to any dangerous conditions on cemetery property. In my view, however, even applying the reasonable-care standard, defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
This conclusion is consistent not only with our case law but also with the dated cases cited by the majority in support of its position. Although the issue of whether a defendant breached a duty of ordinary care is normally a question for the jury, a court can decide the issue as a matter of law when the material facts are undisputed and only one reasonable inference can be drawn therefrom. See LaFaso v. LaFaso, 126 Vt. 90, 96, 223 A.2d 814, 819 (1966); Restatement (Second) of Torts § 328B (courts reserve power to make preliminary determination of whether evidence will permit reasonable jury to come to more than one conclusion; where evidence makes it clear that defendant has or has not conformed to applicable standard of care, and that no reasonable jury could reach contrary conclusion, court must withdraw issue from jury).
As the majority acknowledges, the ultimate question in determining whether actionable negligence exists is whether the harm was foreseeable. See LaFaso, 126 Vt. at 93-94, 223 A.2d at 817-18 (foresight of harm lies at foundation of negligence; actionable negligence is made out only when it appears that prudent person, in like circumstances, should have reasonably anticipated harm); Pion v. Southern New England Tel., 691 A.2d 1107, 1110 (Conn. App. Ct. 1997) (ultimate test is whether reasonable person in defendant’s position, knowing what defendant knew or should have known, would *491anticipate that harm suffered was likely to result; if reasonable person in defendant’s position could not foresee that type of harm alleged would result from defendant’s acts or omissions, plaintiff cannot maintain cause of action). “Simply put, defendant can be found liable only if he has failed to take steps that a reasonable person would take under like circumstances.” Zukatis v. Perry, 165 Vt. 298, 302, 682 A.2d 964, 967 (1996). The mere possibility of harm is not enough to satisfy the foreseeability test. See Pion, 691 A.2d at 1110.
In LaFaso, this Court refused to hold as a matter of law that a grandfather’s gift of a functioning but fluidless lighter to his three- and-one-half-year-old grandson was not actionable negligence; according to the Court, because reasonable minds might differ on whether the grandfather acted negligently, the jury should decide the issue. See 126 Vt. at 96, 223 A.2d at 819. Similarly, in the cases cited by the majority, courts concluded that the following actions created a jury question as to the defendants’ liability: placing a ladder over an open stairwell in a building at a construction site frequented by children, including the four-year-old plaintiff, see Trobiani v. Racienda, 238 N.E.2d 177, 179 (Ill. App. Ct. 1968); allowing young children to play on an abandoned oil tank and use the tank to climb a nearby tree, see Smith v. Springman Lumber Co., 191 N.E.2d 256, 257, 258 (Ill. App. Ct. 1963); leaving the remnants of a barbed-wire fence in an area known to be frequented by children, see Cincinnati & H. Spring Co. v. Brown, 69 N.E. 197, 197, 198 (Ind. Ct. App. 1903); stringing barbed wire on land frequented by children from the adjoining school yard, see Barr v. Green, 104 N.E. 619, 620 (N.Y. 1914); placing one-foot-high flanged stakes in the ground four inches from a public sidewalk), see Schaut v. Borough of St. Mary’s, 14 A.2d 583, 584, 585 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1940).
I agree that the defendants’ actions in each of the above cases created a jury question as to whether the defendants had breached their duty of ordinary care to the plaintiffs. But in each of those cases the harm suffered was reasonably foreseeable, not merely remotely possible. Courts, including this Court, have not hesitated to grant summary judgment, or even judgment on the pleadings, in favor of defendants who could not have reasonably foreseen the harm suffered by the plaintiffs. For example, in Zukatis, 165 Vt. at 302-03, 682 A.2d at 966-67, we affirmed the trial court’s judgment on the pleadings in favor of defendants accused of failing to prevent a three-year-old child from crawling under their inactivated electric fence and into their pasture, where the child was kicked by their horse. We *492concluded that the plaintiffs failed to allege facts demonstrating that the defendants had acted negligently or “that the potential for young children to enter harm’s way was substantial enough to warrant ‘child proofing’ the pasture.” Id. at 303, 682 A.2d at 967; see also Pion, 691 A.2d at 1111 (trial court properly granted summary judgment in favor of defendant telephone company accused of placing repeater box on telephone pole in such close proximity to road as to create hazard to bicyclists straying from road; trial court was correct in determining as matter of law that defendant could not reasonably foresee possibility of accident, and that even if such possibility existed, it was too remote to create duty in defendant); Foreman v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 574 N.E.2d 178, 182-83 (Ill. App. Ct. 1991) (trial court properly granted judgment on pleadings to defendant railroad company accused of failing to fence area that adjoined railway line and that was known to be frequented by children; existence of path used by children and absence of fence was not enough for reasonable jury to conclude that company should have foreseen that eleven-year-old child would attempt to climb onto moving freight train).
Here, by allowing plaintiffs to proceed against defendants under the facts and circumstances of this case, the majority is, in effect, requiring the Association to child-proof its cemetery, an impossible task. The majority contends that a reasonable jury could find that the accident was foreseeable, and thus that the Association should have taken precaution’ary steps to avoid the accident, because (1) the cemetery gates were open, and children were known to play in and around the cemetery; (2) the fence spikes were dangerous to anyone who came in contact with them, and yet they no longer fulfilled their purpose of keeping persons out of the cemetery; and (3) defendants’ caretaker knew that the cemetery fence was dangerous, that the tree from which decedent fell had branches overhanging the fence, and that there was a tree-house structure in a different tree located on cemetery grounds.
Some of these factors relied on by the majority are either irrelevant or insupportable by the undisputed facts of the case; the remaining ones are insufficient to create liability on the part of the Cemetery Association or its president. The cemetery gates were open simply because the cemetery was open to the public. Although defendants were aware that children often rode their bikes through the cemetery and occasionally played in and around the cemetery grounds, the undisputed facts are that the caretaker never saw any children climbing trees or building tree forts in or around the cemetery, and *493none of the boys involved in the accident had ever climbed trees or built tree forts in or around the cemetery. The fact that the cemetery was unable to keep out unwanted visitors does not make them liable for the accident.
In determining that this case presents a jury question on negligence, the majority relies principally on the claim that the caretaker, who is not even a defendant in the action, knew that the fence was dangerous, that the tree from which the decedent fell overhung the fence, and that a tree-house structure was present in another tree in the cemetery. First, there are no facts demonstrating that the caretaker knew the fence was dangerous. When asked if anyone had been injured by contact with the fence in the past, the caretaker, who had been at the cemetery over fifteen years, testified that as far as he knew the boy was the first one. In response to interrogatories, the Association stated that it had heard a rumor that on one occasion the gravedigger’s son may have injured himself climbing over the fence while helping his father. The president of the Association acknowledged that the four-foot fence would pose a danger to anyone foolish enough to straddle it, but that it was too high for an adult, let alone a child, to attempt such a feat. The decedent’s nine-year-old brother testified that he had never attempted to climb the fence. None of these facts demonstrate that the Association could have foreseen that children too small to otherwise be injured by the fence could become impaled on it by falling out of trees on neighboring property adjoining the fence.
Second, the caretaker may well have known that trees on neighboring property had branches overhanging the fence, but there is no evidence that any of these trees had branches low enough to reach without the aid of a ladder. Indeed, the lowest branches in the tree in question, as the exhibits demonstrate, were several feet above the top of the fence and impossible to reach without a ladder.
Third, although the caretaker was aware that some old boards had been left in one of the trees in the cemetery, he testified that the boards had been there undisturbed for at least the fifteen years he had worked for the Cemetery Association. The decedent’s brother testified that the structure had no walls or ceiling, but merely a few floor boards.
Finally, two or three days before the accident, the caretaker saw an abandoned ladder lying in an old railroad bed located off cemetery grounds, but thought nothing of it. According to him, different articles were left there from time to time.
*494From these facts, plaintiffs contend, and the majority agrees, that although there had been no problem in the past with children climbing trees or building tree forts in or around the cemetery, the Cemetery Association should have anticipated that children would see the old boards left in a cemetery tree, get the idea to build a tree fort, discover an abandoned ladder off cemetery grounds, haul the ladder across the cemetery and use it to climb an otherwise unscalable tree that was not on cemetery property but that had branches overhanging a fence too high to straddle, and then injure themselves by falling out of the tree onto the fence. They ask too much from reasonable minds. The tragic accident that led to this lawsuit was the result of a bizarre sequence of events whose likelihood of occurring was so remote that the Association cannot be held liable for failing to anticipate it. If the Cemetery Association can be held liable under the instant circumstances, there are thousands of other landowners in Vermont who will be hard-pressed to assure that they will not be susceptible to future lawsuits for failing to child-proof their property.