Home visitors: beware of backyards in the dark

Maybe we should all watch our steps when visiting other peoples’ homes after dark.

At least that’s what one recent case suggests.

A mother and her son were guests of a married couple. As the visitors attempted to leave in the evening through their hosts’ back door, the son fell down a flight of steps and impaled himself on a protruding piece of pipe.

His mother subsequently sued the hosts, insisting that they were negligent in not warning their guests of the dangers associated with venturing into the unlit backyard at night.

However, a trial judge, and later the Appeals Court, in Ogni v. Schlien, disagreed, finding that “traversing unfamiliar terrain in complete darkness is an open and obvious danger, and that the hosts therefore owed their guest no duty to warn.”

The Appeals Court began by noting that it is “well established that an owner or possessor of land owes a common-law duty of reasonable care to all lawful visitors.”

Nevertheless, the court continued, “[l]andowners are relieved of the duty to warn of open and obvious dangers on their premises because it is not reasonably foreseeable that a visitor exercising … reasonable care for his own safety would suffer injury from such blatant hazards.”

Here, the appellate court concluded, the trial judge “correctly determined that traversing unfamiliar terrain in complete darkness was an open and obvious danger. …

“[The injured boy's] testimony in his deposition, the court said, “justifies the conclusion that the blatant hazard which he undertook was objectively obvious to a person of ordinary perception and intelligence, exercising reasonable care for his own safety. He stated that it was ‘pitch black,’ and that because of darkness, which was such that he could not see his shoes or anything on the ground, he had to use his hand to guide himself as he entered [his hosts'] backyard. Additionally, [he] stated that he had never before been in the [hosts'] backyard, and had no idea what it looked like when he entered.

“Common sense dictates,” the court concluded, “that the danger of traversing unfamiliar terrain in such darkness would be open and obvious to a person of ordinary perception and intelligence, exercising reasonable care for his or her own safety. Accordingly, as a matter of law, the [hosts] had no duty to warn, and thus could not be liable for [their visitor's] injuries.”

— Paul Lamoureux

Image by Bogdan Suditu, via Flickr.