Liability When Property Has An Attractive Nuisance On It

There are some things and some conditions that just naturally attract people, particularly children. But that’s not just a life observation. It’s one the law makes also, when it comes to the doctrine of attractive nuisance.

Straight Trespassers

To understand attractive nuisance, you must understand the duty that a landowner owes to trespassers. In general, a landowner owes no duty to a complete trespasser, other than to refrain from intentionally injuring them, or from allowing actual known dangerous conditions to exist on property in a completely reckless manner.

In other words, plain negligence doesn’t do it; a trespasser who is injured on someone else’s property, must show that the property owner acted more than just negligently. That’s because the trespasser is there illegally and without the property owner’s knowledge or consent.

Attractive Nuisance

But there are times when people trespass, and we know they are trespassing and we expect it to happen. In fact, property owners may allow the trespassing behavior to continue.

Imagine someone is shopping in a grocery store. Next to the produce, there is a door to the back, inventory or stock area. A customer, looking for help from an employee, wanders into the back stock area, slips, and falls and is injured.

When that customer wandered into the back, he or she was technically a trespasser. But the store knows that’s what customers do when they want help from the store’s staff. It happens all the time. While the store doesn’t welcome it, it also does nothing to stop it from happening. That door or back area is an attractive nuisance.

In terms of children, imagine a bunch of children who like to skate in a store’s empty parking lot. Those kids are trespassing,but the open, empty lot is an attractive nuisance; it is a condition that draws the skateboarders, and the store owner, while not condoning it, allows it to happen. In fact, even now and then, one of those kids walks in and buys a soda, so the store owner actually benefits from their presence.

That empty lot is an attractive nuisance.

An attractive nuisance can be land or a feature of property, like that parking lot, or it could be a physical object that kids would tend to use in some way.

The thing that is the nuisance doesn’t have to, on its own, be something dangerous; in our example above, a vacant parking lot isn’t dangerous. Often, the nuisance is something that younger kids wouldn’t even realize is dangerous. For example, when used safely, a pool is not inherently dangerous, but it as well can be considered an attractive nuisance, as kids wouldn’t appreciate the risk of drowning or other dangers of a pool.

Why it Matters to Victims

Attractive nuisance can make it easier for injured trespassers to prove liability and negligence against a landowner, as they are not treated the way straight trespassers are. The landowner now must treat the injured people as if they were invited, with the same standard of care that the landowner might use towards its customers or visitors.

Injured on someone else’s property? Contact our Rhode Island personal injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 for help.

Sources:

law.cornell.edu/wex/attractive_nuisance_doctrine

nationwide.com/lc/resources/home/articles/attractive-nuisances