Court Opinion

ID: 9705205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:59:50.7307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:08.711418
License: Public Domain

HOLLIGER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion that affirms summary judgment in favor of Union Electric Company. I do not agree that the liability limiting provisions of the Recreational Use Act (RUA), §§ 537.345 through 537.348, apply to Union Electric Company and the surface waters of the Lake of the Ozarks. The majority has done a commendable and scholarly job of researching and analyzing similar statutes and interpretative decisions in a number of other states. The enactments of the various states, however, have widely varied in scope, terminology and exceptions. In my view, therefore, they have only limited value in analyzing and applying Missouri’s version of the RUA.
The majority correctly notes that the RUA does not expressly delineate its purpose. This writer does not believe that the RUA was intended to apply to Union Electric at the Lake of the Ozarks because its use of the lake waters was commercial, not recreational, and the availability of the waters for recreational use is solely because of conditions imposed by its regulatory permit for operation of a hydroelectric facility on a navigable stream of the United States.
Where the legislature fails to state expressly the purpose of a legislative enactment we should look to the words and meaning of the statute as a whole to attempt to discern the statute’s intent. Union Electric Co. v. Platte-Clay Elec. Coop., 814 S.W.2d 643, 647 (Mo.App.1991). Section 537.345(4) defines the term “recreational use” for purposes of the RUA:
[HJunting, fishing, picnicking, biking, nature study, winter sports, viewing or enjoying archaeological or scenic sites, or other activities undertaken for recreation, exercise, education, relaxation, or pleasure on land owned by another.
Boating is not expressly included in § 537.345(4) unless one would argue it falls within the generic description of “similar activities.” In my view it requires some leap of logic to believe that the Missouri legislature, cognizant of the thousands of acres of water in large Missouri lakes intended to generally lump the recreational boating use of those lakes in the term “similar activities.”
This conclusion, it is submitted, is buttressed by the definition of the term “charge” in § 537.345(4):
[T]he admission price or fee asked by an owner of land or an invitation or permission without price or fee to use land for recreational purposes when such invitation or permission is given for the purpose of sales promotion, advertising or public goodwill in fostering business purposes.
In other words, if the invitation is given with some business purpose or benefit, even indirect, then it is deemed with *137“charge” and the landowner is not protected by the RUA.
Here Union Electric has invited or permitted the public to use the waters of Lake of the Ozarks not for some altruistic, non-commercially related reason but because it is required to do so by its federal regulatory permit. The lake exists for the commercial production of hydroelectric power with a secondary purpose of flood control again mandated by federal regulation. Its availability for recreational use by the public is merely a requirement imposed by the federal government as a condition to Union Electric’s damming of a navigable waterway.
It is clear from § 537.348 that the RUA is intended to limit liability that might otherwise exist at common law. Such statutes should be strictly construed. Overcast v. Billings Mutual Ins. Co., 11 S.W.3d 62, 69 (Mo. banc 2000). The majority in my opinion has too broadly construed this statute to supply immunity instead of striking the balance in favor of retaining the common law remedy. Id.
This opinion is not intended to suggest any view on the merits of the liability theory urged against Union Electric. It is merely intended to state the view that immunity for Union Electric was not intended by the RUA and that summary judgment should have not been granted on that ground.