Court Opinion

ID: 9751529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:34:02.985958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:50.579746
License: Public Domain

Jennings, J.
(dissenting). Guilford v. Yale University, 128 Conn. 449, 23 A. 2d 917, was carefully considered, and this court unanimously approved a holding that the question whether a social visitor was a licensee or an invitee was one of fact. The circumstances in the case at bar were entirely different from those in the Guilford case but seem to me to be governed by the same principle. The matter is well summed up by Sir *477Frederick Pollock, who in his work on Torts ([14th Ed.] p. 422) remarked: “[W]hy in common reason should a person invited for the occupier’s pleasure be worse off than one who is about business concerning both?” The holding in the majority opinion doubtless accords with the weight of authority, but for the reasons stated in the Guilford case I do not see why a social visitor, at least one enjoying an express invitation, should not receive the protection accorded an invitee. See Prosser, “Business Visitors & Invitees,” 26 Minn. L. Rev. 573. My inability to agree in the result is due only to the fact that the husband is found not liable. While I shall feel bound by the ruling in the majority opinion in the future, I am, as the author of the recent Guilford case, impelled to dissent.