Court Opinion

ID: 9576551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:25:58.501975+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:09:50.269793
License: Public Domain

FIDEL, Judge,
specially concurring:
Though I join my colleagues in reversing summary judgment, I write separately to comment (1) on the court’s perpetuation of the categories of licensee and invitee and (2) on the status of hidden danger as a touchstone of a landowner’s duty to licensees.
I.
If the court were free to approach duty straightforwardly, it would simply pose— and affirmatively answer — two questions:
(1) Does one who occupies residential property owe any duty of care to guests with respect to dangers on the premises?
(2) Might a jury reasonably find that these defendants failed to act reasonably to avoid exposing a guest to a foreseeable and unreasonable risk of harm?
That approach, if taken here, would satisfy our supreme court’s effort elsewhere in tort law to simplify the definition of duty:
‘[D]uty’ is a question of whether the defendant is under any obligation for the benefit of the particular plaintiff; and in negligence cases, the duty [if it exists] is always the same — to conform to the legal standard of reasonable conduct in the light of the apparent risk.
Coburn v. City of Tucson, 143 Ariz. 50, 52, 691 P.2d 1078, 1080 (1984) (quoting W. Prosser & W. Keeton, The Law of Torts *564§ 53 at 356 (5th ed. 1984)); see also Rossell v. Volkswagen of America, 147 Ariz. 160, 164-66, 709 P.2d 517, 521-23 (1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1108, 106 S.Ct. 1957, 90 L.Ed.2d 365 (1986) (No duty issue arises in a passenger’s case against an auto manufacturer: “In determining what is reasonable care for manufacturers, the plaintiff need only prove the defendant’s conduct presented a foreseeable, unreasonable risk of harm.”).
Unfortunately, simplification has not yet spread to the law of duty to social guests. Although Arizona law recognizes that a premises owner or possessor owes some duty to social guests, it does not yet formulate this duty simply as “to conform to the legal standard of reasonable conduct in the light of the apparent [i.e., foreseeable and unreasonable] risk.” Instead, the law superimposes an archaic exercise in categorization as “invitee” and “licensee,” consigns social guests to the lesser second category, and assigns them a reduced entitlement of care. As articulated by the supreme court in a 1967 case cited by my colleagues:
The rule seems to be settled on this point that the owners of the premises owe no duty to the guest other than to refrain from knowingly letting him run upon a hidden peril or wantonly or wilfully causing him harm.
Shannon v. Butler Homes, Inc., 102 Ariz. 312, 316, 428 P.2d 990, 994 (1967) (quoting Sanders v. Brown, 73 Ariz. 116, 120, 238 P.2d 941, 944 (1951)).
My colleagues reiterate this formulation of the general rule, then cite and apply an exception, also applied in Shannon, for child licensees: Because children may not fully appreciate the risk of a condition open to their perception, “[t]he duty is to exercise such care as a reasonable prudent person would exercise toward children under like circumstances.” 102 Ariz. at 317, 428 P.2d at 995. Thus, by an extended route of generalization and exception, the court finds its way to where it might have started, escaping — though for children only— the categorical accretions of the law of licensees and imposing a simple duty to act reasonably in light of foreseeable, unreasonable risks.
The proliferation of subclassifications, exceptions, and fine gradations in the law of licensees led the United States Supreme Court more than thirty years ago to reject the licensee/invitee distinction as too complex and impractical for admiralty law. See Kermarec v. Compagnie Generate Transatlantique, 358 U.S. 625, 630-32, 79 S.Ct. 406, 409-11, 3 L.Ed.2d 550 (1959). Tracing the licensee/invitee categories to a bygone culture’s “heritage of feudalism,” the court attributed the confusion and conflict of the modern law of licensees to the efforts of modern courts to fashion exceptions in order “to do justice in an industrialized urban society.” Id. at 630, 79 S.Ct. at 410. The court continued:
Through this semantic morass the common law has moved, unevenly and with hesitation, towards ‘imposing on owners and occupiers a single duty of reasonable care in all the circumstances.’
For the admiralty law at this late date to import such conceptual distinctions would be foreign to its traditions of simplicity and practicality.
Id. at 631, 79 S.Ct. at 410 (citations omitted).
Many state courts have been similarly moved by considerations of simplicity and practicality to modify or abolish the categorical common law approach.1 The Su*565preme Court of Tennessee, for example, recently concluded:
that it is both illogical and unjust to continue to employ the common law rules distinguishing between ‘licensees’ and ‘invitees’ in determining the ‘premises liability’ of owners and occupiers of land for injuries sustained by visitors upon that land.
[These] classifications ... are no longer determinative in this jurisdiction ...; the duty owed is one of reasonable care under all of the attendant circumstances, foreseeability of the presence of the visitor and the likelihood of harm to him being one of the principal factors.
Hudson v. Gaitan, 675 S.W.2d 699, 703 (Tenn.1984).
Considerations of simplicity, practicality, and fairness should be no less compelling to the Arizona courts. As the Supreme Court of California commented, one’s “life or limb does not become less worthy of protection by the law nor a loss less worthy of compensation under the law because [one] has come upon the land of another ... with permission but without a business purpose.” Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 119, 443 P.2d 561, 568, 70 Cal. Rptr. 97, 104 (1968).
II.
One consequence of maintaining the superannuated categories of licensee and invitee is the perpetuation of the “open and obvious rule” as a defining test of duty to licensees. That rule is the flip side of the hidden peril requirement. See Hicks v. Superstition Mountain Post No. 9399, Veterans of Foreign Wars, 123 Ariz. 518, 520-21, 601 P.2d 281, 283-84 (1979) (Although a possessor may be liable to invitees for harm caused by a known or obvious danger if the possessor should anticipate the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness, that rule does not apply to licensees. A possessor has a “duty ... to refrain from knowingly exposing [licensees] to a hidden peril,” but “is not liable ... to licensees for open and obvious dangers known to them.”).
The “open and obvious” or “hidden peril” rule has been repeatedly repudiated as a test of duty elsewhere in tort law. In product liability, for example, our supreme court rejected the open and obvious rule fifteen years ago, stating: “We do not subscribe to this ‘patent-latent’ distinction in the context of a manufacturer’s strict liability in tort. Its only function is to *566encourage patent design defects.” Byrns v. Riddell, Inc., 113 Ariz. 264, 267, 550 P.2d 1065, 1068 (1976); see also Turner v. Machine Ice Co., 138 Ariz. 329, 333, 674 P.2d 883, 887 (App.1983) (“The obviousness of a defect is ... only one factor to be considered in the determination of whether the defect is unreasonably dangerous.”).
In a 1963 premises liability case addressing a landlord’s duty to a tenant, our supreme court expressed the identical view:
Of course, the bare fact that a condition is ‘open and obvious’ does not necessarily mean that it is not unreasonably dangerous. 2 Harper & James, The Law of Torts § 27.13. The open and obvious condition is merely a factor in determining whether the condition was unreasonably dangerous.
Cummings v. Prater, 95 Ariz. 20, 27, 386 P.2d 27, 31 (1963).
Two years later, this court, following Cummings, reversed summary judgment and reinstated the personal injury claim of a bowling alley customer, holding that the allegedly obvious nature of a drop in the floor at the side of a bowling lane was “merely a factor ... in determining whether the condition was unreasonably dangerous.” Murphy v. El Dorado Bowl, Inc., 2 Ariz.App. 341, 343, 409 P.2d 57, 59 (1965) (quoting Cummings, 95 Ariz. at 27, 386 P.2d at 31).
More recently, in a case involving a diver injured on public recreational land, our supreme court reversed summary judgment for the state, pointing out that the supposed obviousness of the danger did not bear on the question whether the state as possessor had a duty, but rather on the question whether the state breached the standard of reasonable care:
Again, the possibility that the defect or hazard is ‘open and obvious’ is a factor to be considered in determining whether the possessor’s failure to remedy the hazard or provide a warning was unreasonable and therefore breached the standard of care; it is not a factor to be used in determining the very existence of the duty which is a precondition for the exercise of the standard of care.
Markowitz v. Arizona Parks Bd., 146 Ariz. 352, 356, 706 P.2d 364, 368 (1985).
The supreme court has never confronted the impact of such reasoning on the law of licensees. There is no restriction to invitees inherent in the supreme court’s Markowitz explanation that openness of a danger bears only on the issue of unreasonableness and is “not a factor to be used in determining the very existence of [a] duty.” Id.2 Nor does categorization as licensee logically invalidate the perception that an otherwise patent danger may be nonetheless unreasonable where it might be undiscovered, unappreciated, or momentarily forgotten by a foreseeably distracted or preoccupied visitor. Murphy, 2 Ariz. App. at 343-44, 409 P.2d at 57-58; Markowitz, 146 Ariz. at 356, 706 P.2d at 368; McLeod v. Newcomer, 163 Ariz. 6, 10, 785 P.2d 575, 579 (App.1989).
The difficulty remains, however, that the supreme court has not yet applied to all premises liability cases its recognition that the question whether an open danger is an unreasonable danger requires fact-specific — not categorical — assessment of the degree and severity of the remaining risk. The Markowitz court, for example, stated repeatedly that the plaintiff was an invitee and presented its opinion as an inquiry into the state’s “duty of reasonable care to those whom it invites to its parks.” 146 Ariz. at 357, 706 P.2d at 369. Thus, though the court’s reasoning in cases such as Markowitz has eviscerated the classic formulation of a landowner’s duty to licensees, the *567court to date has left that category outwardly undisturbed.
III.
In summary, the licensee/invitee distinction fails contemporary analysis on multiple counts:
(1) Elsewhere in tort law, our supreme court has distilled, as the essence of duty, to act reasonably in the light of foreseeable and unreasonable risks. Yet under the rubric of licensees, the law defines categories of permissive and invited visitors toward whom landowners need not act reasonably despite what a jury might regard as foreseeable and unreasonable risks.
(2) Elsewhere in tort law, our supreme court has so forcefully and repeatedly rejected the open and obvious rule that its very mention in a motion for summary judgment warns the trial judge of an invitation to reversible error. In the law of licensees, however, the rule has escaped examination and retains some present force.
(3) Elsewhere in tort law, our supreme court has warned pointedly that the obvious quality of a danger pertains only to the question of reasonable care, not to the question of existence of a duty. Yet the classic law of licensees makes hiddenness of danger the very defining element of duty.
My colleagues, recognizing recent trends, demote openness of danger from a question of duty to a question of breach. Yet even in so doing, in apparent deference to the traditional formulation of the law of licensees, they continue to give the “open and obvious” question undue emphasis. They observe, for instance, that “whether the pool constituted a hidden peril to Stacie is a question which reasonable persons may well answer differently.” Elsewhere they pose the question “whether a reasonable person would believe a pool was an open and obvious hazard to a 19 month old child.”
The homeowner’s duty in this case was not to avoid subjecting Stacie to a hidden peril, but “to exercise such care as a reasonable prudent person would exercise toward children under like circumstances.” Shannon, 102 Ariz. at 317, 428 P.2d at 995. Concomitantly, the question of breach for the jury is not whether the pool constituted an open or hidden danger, but whether it constituted an unreasonable danger. In the resolution of that question, the quality of openness or hiddenness should be merely a point of consideration, not a point of stress. Cummings, 95 Ariz. at 27, 386 P.2d at 31.
These reasons, among others, invite reexamination of a distinction that the United States Supreme Court found archaic in 1959. In my judgment, the shelf life of the licensee/invitee distinction has expired.

. Six jurisdictions have eliminated the distinction between licensees and invitees, but have retained trespassers as a separate classification. See Poulin v. Colby College, 402 A.2d 846, 851 (Me.1979); Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693, 707 & n. 7, 297 N.E.2d 43, 51-52 & n. 7 (1973); Peterson v. Balach, 294 Minn. 161, 164, 199 N.W.2d 639, 642 (1972); O'Leary v. Coenen, 251 N.W.2d 746, 751 (N.D.1977); Hudson v. Gaitan, 675 S.W.2d 699, 703 (Tenn.1984); Antoniewicz v. Reszcynski, 70 Wis.2d 836, 856-57, 236 N.W.2d 1, 11 (1975). Illinois has eliminated this distinction by statute. Ill.Ann.Stat. ch. 80, paras. 301-04 (Smith-Hurd 1987). The Maryland Supreme Court has stated that any change in the law with regard to trespassers is a legislative prerogative, Murphy v. Baltimore Gas & Elec., 290 Md. 186, 195, 428 A.2d 459, 465 (1981), but has recently questioned the continuing usefulness of the distinction between licensees and invitees. Wagner v. Doehring, 315 Md. 97, 102 n. 3, 553 A.2d 684, 686 n. 3 (1989). Oklahoma, in a recent decision treating injury *565to a trespasser, has declined to depart from the common law rule of differing duty between trespassers and those on property with express or implied permission. Lohrenz v. Lane, 787 P.2d 1274, 1277 (Okla.1990).
Florida has redefined social guests as invitees, but has retained the separate category of licensees. See Wood v. Camp, 284 So.2d 691, 695 (Fla.1973). Connecticut has statutorily eliminated the distinction between business invitees and social guests. Conn.Gen.Stat.Ann. § 52-557a (1991).
Nine other jurisdictions have altogether rejected the approach of basing duty upon a plaintiff’s status as licensee, invitee, or trespasser. See Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, 469 F.2d 97, 105 (D.C.Cir.1972); Webb v. City of Sitka, 561 P.2d 731, 733 (Alaska 1977); Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 118-19, 443 P.2d 561, 568, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 104 (1968); Mile High Fence Co. v. Radovich, 175 Colo. 537, 547, 489 P.2d 308, 314 (1971); Pickard v. City of Honolulu, 51 Haw. 134, 135, 452 P.2d 445, 446 (1969); Cates v. Beauregard Electric Corp., 328 So.2d 367, 371 (La.1976); Ouellette v. Blanchard, 116 N.H. 552, 557, 364 A.2d 631, 634 (1976); Basso v. Miller, 40 N.Y.2d 233, 241, 352 N.E.2d 868, 872, 386 N.Y.S.2d 564, 568 (1976); Mariorenzi v. Joseph DiPonte, Inc., 114 R.I. 294, 307, 333 A.2d 127, 133 (1975).
Illinois courts have abolished the common law classifications with regard to children. See Cope v. Doe, 102 Ill.2d 278, 288, 80 Ill.Dec. 40, 45, 464 N.E.2d 1023, 1028 (1984). In addition, Montana has interpreted its general liability statute so as to require reasonable care toward all entrants upon land. See Limberhand v. Big Ditch Co., 218 Mont. 132, 140-41, 706 P.2d 491, 497 (1985).
Another seven jurisdictions have considered the common law classification approach and have explicitly declined to alter it. See Baldwin by Baldwin v. Mosley, 295 Ark. 285, 289, 748 S.W.2d 146, 148 (1988); Huyck v. Hecla Mining Co., 101 Idaho 299, 301, 612 P.2d 142, 144 (1980); Bowers v. Ottenad, 240 Kan. 208, 211, 729 P.2d 1103, 1105 (1986); Kirschner v. Louisville Gas & Electric Co., 743 S.W.2d 840, 844 (Ky.1988); Adams v. Fred's Dollar Store of Batesville, 497 So.2d 1097, 1102 (Miss.1986); Egede-Nissen v. Crystal Mountain, Inc., 93 Wash.2d 127, 131-32, 606 P.2d 1214, 1218 (1980); Yalowizer v. Husky Oil Co., 629 P.2d 465, 469 (Wyo.1981).

. The majority takes a step toward importing this recognition into the law of licensees, stating, pursuant to Markowitz, that “whether a hazard is ‘open and obvious’ is not relevant to determine the existence of duty ... [but] to determining if the duty was breached.” The supreme court, however, has not yet abandoned — at least for adult licensees — hiddenness of danger as a defining element of duty. Compare Shannon, 102 Ariz. at 317, 428 P.2d at 995 (because children may not appreciate the risk of a condition open to their perception, possessors owe child licensees a duty of reasonable care under the circumstances) with Hicks, 123 Ariz. at 521, 601 P.2d at 284 (possessors owe adult licensees a duty of protection against hidden, not open and obvious, perils).