Court Opinion

ID: 9599636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:20:15.20953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:45.875362
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion concludes that the attractive nuisance doctrine “should not be extended to natural dangerous conditions on the land” because it “would tend toward the closure of private open-space land and would work adversely to the public policy of Oregon as declared by the Oregon legislature.”
Admittedly, the legislature has declared that it is in the interest of the public to provide outdoor recreation areas. But the legislature did not say that this public interest is to be served by insulating from liability landowners who expose children to unreasonable risks which could be avoided without undue or *389disproportionate expense to the landowner. As Dean Prosser has observed: .. ’
“It is difficult to see why the origin of the condition should in itself make all the difference, so long as the possessor permits it to remain. Obviously, in the ordinary case, the owner would be under an impossible and prohibitive burden if he were required to improve wild land in a state of nature to make it safe for trespassing children; and no doubt in the great majority of cases this will be a controlling reason for holding that he is not negligent, as a matter of law. But what if there is no such burden. Suppose a beach, on which the young children of the neighborhood habitually trespass, wade and swim, with a hidden drop-off ten feet from shore. If it were an artificial beach, the owner would at least be required to put up a warning sign. Is he absolved from that responsibility by the fact that the beach has always been there, and he has not changed it? The prediction may be ventured that he is not.” Prosser, Trespassing Children, 47 Calif L Rev 427 at 446-47 (1959).
■ The • extension of the attractive nuisance doctrine to natural conditions which are dangerous to children will not impose upon a defendant any greater burden to protect them than he has where the condition is created by him. In either case, the landowner has the burden only of taking reasonable precautions against exposing the child to danger and in either ease, as Prosser points out, “* * * [i]f nothing effective can be done to protect him without undue and disproporportionate trouble and expense to the defendant, there is no liability even for a clearly recognizable risk, demonstrated by past experience, that children may get into trouble, so long as the risk is not too extreme.” (Id. at 465.)
I would reverse.