Court Opinion

ID: 9578397
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:44:52.227968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:00.853354
License: Public Domain

Harrison, J.,
delivered the opinion of the court.
On October 17, 1969, Cynthia Anne Halme, 20 months of age, slipped out of the apartment where she lived with her parents while her mother was talking to a neighbor at the apartment door. Ten to twenty minutes after she was last seen by her mother in the apartment, looking at television with several other small children, she was found by neighbors in a drainage canal 60 to 70 feet upstream from *299her apartment, apparently dead. She was revived and taken to the hospital. However, she died from pneumonia three days later as a result of her immersion in the canal.
Cynthia’s administrator, her father Rommie C. Miller, brought this wrongful death action against John Aragona Enterprises, Inc., the owner and operator of the apartment leased by Cynthia’s parents. The motion for judgment alleged that Aragona negligently failed to keep its premises in a reasonably safe condition and that Cynthia’s death was a proximate result of such negligence. The case was tried before a jury, which returned a verdict for the administrator in the amount of $27,000 to be equally apportioned between the parents. The trial court reduced the amount of the verdict to $25,885, of which $25,000 was to be equally apportioned between the parents and $885 paid to the administrator for allowable expenses, and entered judgment for the administrator in the reduced amount. We granted Aragona a writ of error.
Aragona owns and operates an extensive apartment complex in the City of Virginia Beach known as the Kings Arms Apartments. Many of the building units comprising the complex border on the drainage canal in which Cynthia was found. The canal lies within the confines of a drainage easement of the City of Virginia Beach, extending across the Aragona property and adjacent property 100 feet in width, being 50 feet on each side of a center line which coincides with the Aragona property line at about the middle of the canal. The canal itself has a 70-foot top width. The water level, fluctuating with tidal flow, is approximately five feet below the level of the surrounding land and the banks of the canal are very steep.
Between the apartment buildings and the canal bank there is a level, open grassed area which was maintained by Aragona. The manager of the apartment complex testified that tenants were neither permitted nor denied the use of the area between the apartments and the canal, but he was aware that they did in fact use. this area.
Aragona’s principal contention is that it was free of any negligence which was the proximate cause of the death of plaintiff’s intestate. On the other hand, the plaintiff-administrator says that Aragona was negligent in failing to exercise reasonable care to maintain the area between the apartment buildings and the canal in a reasonably safe manner and that it should have erected some sort of a barrier, such as a wall or hedge, to prevent children from falling into the canal.
A landlord is not liable to a tenant or to members of his family, *300whether adult or infant, resulting from an open and obvious condition existing at the inception of the tenancy, and of which the tenant knew or had means of knowing equal to the landlord. Berlin v. Wall, 122 Va. 425, 437, 438, 95 S.E. 394, 398 (1918); Golf Club Company v. Rothstein, 97 Ga.App. 128, 130-32, 102 S.E.2d 654, 655-56, aff’d 214 Ga. 187, 104 S.E.2d 83 (1958); Jones v. United States, 241 F.2d 26 (4th Cir. 1957).
Berlin v. Wall, supra, involved an action by the infant child of a tenant seeking to recover for injuries received as the result of a fall through a skylight around which the landlord had erected a railing. The infant climbed or fell through the opening between the planks of the railing, or from the top of the railing, through the skylight to the floor beneath. Recovery was denied and in its opinion the court said:
“Dangers constantly beset unattended small children, and the defendants cannot be held responsible for the happening of an accident from a possible danger, the existence of which was disclosed to the parents and natural guardians of the infant plaintiff, and of which the defendants had given sufficient warning.” 122 Va. at 438, 95 S.E. at 398.
In Golf Club Company v. Rothstein, supra, the landlord owned an apartment building which was leased to Rothstein and numerous other tenants. Immediately behind the building was a backyard 60 feet in width, which was grassed over like a lawn, and immediately beyond that, with no fence or other barrier separating them, was a ravine about 75 feet in depth. There was nothing to protect the plaintiff or other children from slipping or falling from the grassed portion of the backyard into the steep side of the ravine. Rothstein’s 2-year-old son, whüe playing in the yard, slipped and fell into the ravine and was injured. There, as in the instant case, the only negligence alleged pertains to a failure by the landlord to construct a fence between the grassed area and the ravine, or else have posted someone on duty to see that children did not fall into the ravine.
The court denied a recovery, and in its opinion said:
“Thus, the grassed portion plus the ravine composed the back yard of the dwellings, and the child was playing either on the lip or along the side of the 75-foot ravine when he slipped and fell. Such an area is not a hidden trap but a perfectly obvious bit of irregular *301terrain. The duty of an owner of land under Code § 105-401 is not to insure the safety of invitees but to exercise ordinary care to see that the premises are safe. Irregular as much of our Georgia countryside is, it could hardly be held that a landowner must render inaccessible to children every portion of irregular terrain or permanently station a guard to supervise their activities thereon. No question of attractive nuisance is presented here, nor of unfamiliarity with the premises, nor of a dangerous instrumentality or hidden trap (the gully on the steep side of a deep ravine, whether obscured by underbrush or not, not being in that particular location such a defect).” 97 Ga. App. at 133, 102 S.E. 2d at 657.
In Jones v. United States, supra, the landlord was the Federal Public Housing Administration. The apartment involved adjoined the mam line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The 2 3-month-old son of a tenant, temporarily unattended by his mother, wandered onto the railroad tracks and was severely injured. Recovery was sought on the theory that when the government erected the housing project adjacent to the railroad it knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known, that there was serious danger to small children of its tenants and standards of reasonable care required some provision to protect these children. The court, speaking through Judge Hoffman, said:
“The danger here was open, obvious, natural, and common to all. In such a situation, the primary duty to inform, advise and protect a child of tender years must rest upon the parents or others in loco parentis. To require a landlord to erect a fence or barricade alongside a railroad track or highway, in order that adventurous children may not enter, would impose such a burden that it may unduly interfere with the lawful use of the property.
* # # * *
“This is not a case in which the defendant has created any hidden defect or danger by its own act, or has been guilty of omission in failing to remedy such hidden danger on its own property. ***
“The Maryland authorities affirmatively support appellee’s contention that a landlord owes no greater duty to a minor child than to the adult tenant with regard to open and obvious dangers. [Citing case.] To hold otherwise would, in substance, impose upon *302a landlord the duty of making the premises, and adjoining premises, childproof. ***” 241 F. 2d at 29-30.
In Fitch v. Selwyn Village, 234 N. C. 632, 68 S.E.2d 255 (1951), the 2-year-old son of a tenant, while at play, and at a moment when his mother had stepped indoors to answer her telephone, wandered down to the waters of Sugar Creek on the landlord’s property, fell into the creek and was drowned. Action was brought claiming that the landlord should have erected a fence or other obstacle to prevent small children from falling or climbing down the creek’s banks to the creek. The lower court sustained a demurrer, which action was approved on appeal, the court observing:
“ ‘The attractive nuisance doctrine generally is not applicable to bodies of water, artificial as well as natural, in the absence of some unusual condition or artificial feature other than the mere water and its location.’
# * * * *
“But, we know of no decision in this or any other jurisdiction, where the owner of land has been held liable for failure to erect a fence or other obstruction to protect small children from obtaining access to a branch or creek upon his premises which flows in its natural state.
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“If it should be conceded that a branch or creek is inherently dangerous to children of tender years, it must also be conceded that such streams cannot be easily guarded and rendered safe. * * #” 234 N.C. at 634-35, 68 S.E.2d at 257.
To the same effect see Roberson v. City of Kinston, 261 N.C. 135, 134 S.E.2d 193 (1964), which involved an infant child of a tenant who fell into a canal of the City of Kinston adjoining the property of the landlord. There the issue involved the failure to erect a fence or barricade to protect the children from the dangers incident to the canal. Recovery was denied and the court reaffirmed the rule of law it had previously stated in Fitch, supra.
In the instant case the negligence alleged pertains not to a defect in construction, or failure to repair the apartments or to maintain the premises in a proper condition. The complaint is that Aragona did not provide a barricade between the rear yard of plaintiff’s apartment *303and the canal. True, Aragona owned the fee in the canal. However, the City of Virginia Beach had acquired an easement for its construction, and the canal was controlled, repaired and maintained by the City.
The canal and its embankments near the apartment in which Cynthia’s parents resided were not intended for the use of the tenants of Aragona. It was not a reserved area, and it was not controlled by the landlord. No negligence is shown on the part of Aragona in the maintenance of the tenants’ yards. Obviously the canal, located to the rear of the apartments, constituted a potential danger for an unattended 20-month-old infant. So would a ravine, a deep gully, a river, a branch, a railroad, a highway, a parking lot, or a busy alley located the same distance from the apartment. Had Aragona’s apartment been located adjoining the beach, the Atlantic Ocean would have been a like hazard for an unattended infant of a tenant.
If the lack of a barrier constitutes a defect in the premises it was one which was open, obvious, apparent and common to all at the time the rental agreement was entered into between Aragona and the parents of plaintiff’s intestate, and it so remained. It was not hidden or latent, and it was not created by the landlord.
The duty of an owner of land is not to insure the safety of its tenants and their children, Apartments, Inc. v. Bisson, 207 Va. 474, 478, 150 S.E. 2d 540, 542 (1966), but to exercise ordinary care to see that the premises rented to them are reasonably safe and to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition.
As regrettable and sad as the unfortunate death of plaintiff’s intestate was, the evidence does not establish negligence on the part of Aragona. Therefore the judgment of the court below is set aside and reversed, and final judgment is here entered for Aragona.

Reversed and final judgment.