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    Bennett v. Stanley Facts:: Trespassing

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    doniluo
    The plaintiff sued the defendants after the plaintiff's mother and half-brother drowned in the defendants' unused swimming pool on the defendants' property. The defendants moved for summary judgment, which was granted by the trial court. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed finding the defendants only owed a duty to refrain from wanton or willful misconduct. However, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that child trespassers should be owed a different duty of care. Specifically, the court held that landowners owe a duty of reasonable care to child trespassers under the attractive nuisance doctrine when the land contains artificial conditions involving risks of death or serious harm that young children would not appreciate.

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    Bennett v. Stanley Facts:: Trespassing

    Uploaded by

    doniluo
    39 views2 pages
    The plaintiff sued the defendants after the plaintiff's mother and half-brother drowned in the defendants' unused swimming pool on the defendants' property. The defendants moved for summary judgment, which was granted by the trial court. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed finding the defendants only owed a duty to refrain from wanton or willful misconduct. However, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that child trespassers should be owed a different duty of care. Specifically, the court held that landowners owe a duty of reasonable care to child trespassers under the attractive nuisance doctrine when the land contains artificial conditions involving risks of death or serious harm that young children would not appreciate.

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    brief

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    Bennett Brief

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    The plaintiff sued the defendants after the plaintiff's mother and half-brother drowned in the defendants' unused swimming pool on the defendants' property. The defendants moved for summary judgment, which was granted by the trial court. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed finding the defendants only owed a duty to refrain from wanton or willful misconduct. However, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that child trespassers should be owed a different duty of care. Specifically, the court held that landowners owe a duty of reasonable care to child trespassers under the attractive nuisance doctrine when the land contains artificial conditions involving risks of death or serious harm that young children would not appreciate.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    39 views2 pages

    Bennett v. Stanley Facts:: Trespassing

    Uploaded by

    doniluo
    The plaintiff sued the defendants after the plaintiff's mother and half-brother drowned in the defendants' unused swimming pool on the defendants' property. The defendants moved for summary judgment, which was granted by the trial court. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed finding the defendants only owed a duty to refrain from wanton or willful misconduct. However, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that child trespassers should be owed a different duty of care. Specifically, the court held that landowners owe a duty of reasonable care to child trespassers under the attractive nuisance doctrine when the land contains artificial conditions involving risks of death or serious harm that young children would not appreciate.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Bennett v.

    Stanley
    Facts: When Bennett, plaintiff-appellant, arrived home in the late afternoon, he found his two
    young daughters crying. The three-year-old daughter told him that Mommy and her five-year-old
    half-brother, were drowning in the water. Bennett ran next door to his neighbors' house to find
    mother and son unconscious in the swimming pool. Both died. Stanleys' property included a
    swimming pool that had gone unused for three years. At that time, the pool was enclosed with
    fencing and a brick wall. After moving in, the Stanleys drained the pool once but they allowed
    rainwater to accumulate in the pool to a depth of over six feet. They removed a tarp that had been
    on the pool and also removed the fencing that had been around two sides of the pool. The pool
    became pond-like: it contained tadpoles and frogs, and Mr. Stanley had seen a snake swimming
    on the surface. The pool contained no ladders, and its sides were slimy with algae. The houses
    were about one hundred feet apart. There was some fencing with an eight-foot gap between the
    two properties. The Stanleys were aware that the Bennetts had moved next door and that they
    had young children. They did not post any warning or no trespassing signs on their property.
    Procedural history: Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment, which the trial court
    granted. The trial court found that decedents were trespassers on defendants property and that
    defendants therefore owed them only a duty to refrain from wanton and willful misconduct. The
    trial court rejected plaintiffs argument that defendants maintenance of the swimming pool
    amounted to a dangerous active operation that would create for them a duty of ordinary care. As
    the complaint alleged that defendants had violated a duty of ordinary care, the court found for the
    Stanleys. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed the trial court's granting of summary judgment.
    It held that defendants owed the decedents only a duty to refrain from wanton and willful
    misconduct, and added that there was no evidence of such misconduct. This court reversed the
    judgment of the court of appeals and remanded the cause to the trial court.
    Issues: whether child trespassers should become a class of users who are owed a different duty of
    care?
    Rules: Restatement of the Law 2d, Torts (1965), Section 339: A possessor of land is subject to
    liability for physical harm to children trespassing thereon caused by an artificial condition upon
    land if: (a) the place where the condition exists is one upon which the possessor knows or has
    reason to know that children are likely to trespass, and (b) the condition is one of which the
    possessor knows or has reason to know and which he realizes or should realize will involve an
    unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily harm to such children, and (c) the children because
    of their youth do not discover the condition or realize the risk involved in intermeddling with it
    or in coming within the area made dangerous by it, and (d) the utility to the possessor of
    maintaining the condition and the burden of eliminating the danger are slight as compared with
    the risk to children involved, and (e) the possessor fails to exercise reasonable care to eliminate
    the danger or otherwise to protect the children.
    Holdings: Yes, child trespassers should become a class of users who are owed a different duty of
    care.
    Children of tender years, and youthful persons generally, are entitled to a degree of care
    proportioned to their inability to foresee and avoid the perils that they may encounter. The same

    discernment and foresight in discovering defects and dangers cannot be reasonably expected of
    them, that older and experienced persons habitually employ; and therefore the greater precaution
    should be taken, where children are exposed to them.
    The dangerous instrumentality exception to nonliability to trespassers imposes upon the owner or
    occupier of a premises a higher duty of care to a child trespasser when such owner or occupier
    actively and negligently operates hazardous machinery or other apparatus, the dangerousness of
    which is not readily apparent to children.
    The Restatement's version of the attractive nuisance doctrine balances society's interest in
    protecting children with the rights of landowners to enjoy their property. Even when a landowner
    is found to have an attractive nuisance on his or her land, the landowner is left merely with the
    burden of acting with ordinary care. A landowner does not automatically become liable for any
    injury a child trespasser may suffer on that land.

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