Court Opinion

ID: 9847291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:57:20.651368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:06.412271
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree that the judgment should be affirmed. My view is grounded narrowly upon the plaintiffs’ failure to present facts showing, or supporting a reasonable inference, that the boat constituted a dangerous condition on the defendants’ property.
The Court reaches its conclusion by a different route. The Court presumes that the child was a trespasser, and upon that presumption the Court invokes section 339 of the RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS. The Court then imputes to the Restatement a requirement that “the danger to the child must be latent.” Ante at p. 4. However, in my view, the record is far from clear on the question of a trespass. Neither is the meaning of section 339 made any clearer by ascribing to it the elusive and conceptually dubious dichotomy between “latent” and “patent” risks. Rather, the dispositive point in this case simply is that regardless of whether the child was a trespasser or a social guest, and regardless of whether any alleged risk was patent or latent, there was insufficient proof of a dangerous condition on the property. Absent such a showing, the plaintiffs could not prevail on any theory. See Restatement §§ 342 and 343B (including comment c).
Moreover, I believe it is unnecessary to suggest, as my colleagues do, that children invariably will recognize and appreciate the danger of falling from heights. One may readily conceive of circumstances where such a danger would not be fully understood or where the magnetic pull of an attraction on the property would be so great that the landowner reasonably could foresee a child exposing himself to an apparent risk. Because the Court’s opinion today sweeps too broadly, I concur only in the result.