ODGers,

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has decided a landowner liability case with compelling facts (with which law students and more than a few law profs might identify) and a concise treatment of the rationale, not a bad tool for teaching the common law framework.

The plaintiff-decedent mistook an employee-only area for the men's room at the pub.  He fell down an unlit stairwell and suffered injuries that proved fatal.  The jury gave a wrongful death verdict for the plaintiff on negligence.

On appeal the defendant challenged the negligence verdict; and also asserted that the trial judge erred in ruling as a matter of law that the plaintiff was not a trespasser in the employee-only area, that that question should have been submitted to the jury.  The Court explained the landowner liability framework in Massachusetts law, which allows liability to a trespasser upon recklessness rather than negligence.  The Court agreed that with the pertinent facts undisputed, the trial court was correct to determine the plaintiff's non-trespasser status as a matter of law.  The Court also upheld the negligent verdict as predicated upon sufficient evidence.

In the classification analysis, there's some good language about duty of care that would facilitate a discussion of the inter-relationship between duty and breach standards.  And in the negligence/sufficiency analysis, there's an opportunity to distinguish the analysis of an unreasonable risk from the analysis of an unreasonable actor.

Let me know when you come to New Bedford or Taunton, Mass., and I'll buy you a brew at Smitty's Pub.

The short decision (eight pages in big type) came in Bernier v. Smitty's Sports Pub, Inc., http://www.mass.gov/courts/docs/sjc/reporter-of-decisions/new-opinions/14p1967.pdf.

rick