extending reasonable care to social guests or invited licensees but retaining distinction for uninvited licensees and trespassers
How later courts described this case
- extending reasonable care to social guests or invited licensees but retaining distinction for uninvited licensees and trespassers
- finding that occupier of land owes a duty to police officer who fell on an accumulation of ice caused by a defect in the drainage system
- explaining that the duty of care is defined in part by the likelihood of injury
- abolishing li censee-invitee distinction and creating common duty of reasonable care to all lawful visitors in case involving injury to policeman who fell on accumulation of ice at defendant’s residence
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Wilson v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, 366 Mass. 588 (1975)
Without considering the retroactivity of that decision, we point out that the Mounsey case is inapposite here, in light of the single narrow issue that is before us.
The opinion
Kaplan, J.
(concurring). I go along with the court but I am taken somewhat aback by footnote 7 which seems unfaithful to the rest of the opinion. The court holds that the measure of responsibility of an occupier should no longer depend on whether the injured person is characterized as a “licensee’ rather than an “invitee,” or vice versa; the question is to turn on other, more vital factors. But footnote 7 seems to say that “trespassers” stand apart, that that characterization is to remain decisive or highly influential. This tends to perpetuate, although on a smaller scale, the kind of tradition-bound and mistaken analysis that I had supposed the court was aiming to correct. For it is sometimes just as hard to *718 distinguish trespassers from licensees or invitees, as to distinguish licensees from invitees; and the class of trespassers is probably just as various as either of the other classes. The very effort at dry classification and differentation puts the emphasis at the wrong places. Thus it is awkward to leave the suggestion that the basic reasoning of the court’s opinion may stop short of so called trespassers. See Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal. 2d 108 , and note the unsatisfactory condition of English law as to trespassers after they were excluded from the Occupiers’ Liability Act, 1957 (mentioned in footnote 8). Millner, Negligence in Modern Law, c. 1, p. 11, c. 2, pp. 47-54 (1967). North, Occupiers’ Liability, c. 11 (1971). Herrington v. British Rys. Bd. [1971] 2 Q. B. 107, affd. sub nom. British Rys. Bd. v. Herrington, [1972] A. C. 877.