Fourseam Coal Corp. v. Greer

• Decision Date: 25 February 1955
• Citation: 282 S.W.2d 129
• Parties: FOURSEAM COAL CORPORATION, Appellant, v. Charles GREER, By His Mother and Next Friend, Augustine Greer, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

Page 129

282 S.W.2d 129

FOURSEAM COAL CORPORATION, Appellant, v. Charles GREER, By His Mother and Next Friend, Augustine

Greer, Appellee.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

Feb. 25, 1955.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 14, 1955.

Craft & Stanfill, Hazard, for appellant.

Napier & Napier, Hazard, for appellee.

CULLEN, Commissioner.

Charles Greer, an infant, recovered judgment against the Fourseam Coal Corporation, in the amount of $5,000, as damages for personal injuries sustained by Greer when he fell from a coal tipple owned and operated by the corporation. Appealing from the judgment, the corporation maintains that the court erred in not sustaining its motion for a directed verdict.

The plaintiff's case was predicated upon the attractive nuisance doctrine. The corporation contends that the doctrine is not applicable to the facts of this case.

The injured boy was six years old at the time of the accident. The trial was not held until four years later, so at the time of the trial he was ten years of age. His testimony was that he was crossing the tipple, which led from one hillside to another, because it afforded him a short cut from his home to that of his grandparents. He testified that a board broke loose as he stepped upon it, but from the other evidence it is quite certain that he merely fell through a gap or open place on the top of the tipple.

The tipple is a large structure, with three sets of mine railway tracks upon it; also a solid roadbed upon which motor trucks may be backed. It appears that there is no floor beneath the railway tracks, and there is a large V-shaped open space between two sets of tracks which curve onto the tipple from opposite sides. The tipple extends across a small valley, and the top of the tipple is some 40 or 50 feet above the low point of the valley. The point from which the boy fell was some 20 or 25 feet above the sloping hillside, but the boy did not fall that distance because his body struck some cross braces as he fell.

There were no gates at either end of the tipple, and no guard rails. The use of the tipple was for dumping coal from motor trucks and tram cars into railroad cars standing upon tracks extending underneath the tipple.

There was evidence that children in the neighborhood frequently played upon the tipple, and that this fact was known to the officials of the coal company. The theory of the plaintiff's case was that under these circumstances the coal company had a duty either to use gates or other devices to keep the children off the tipple, or to install a floor and guard rails to prevent the children from falling through or from the tipple.

This Court previously has indicated its acceptance of the version of the attractive nuisance doctrine set forth in the Restatement of the Law of Torts. See Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Vaughn, 292 Ky. 120, 166 S.W.2d 43; Guelda v. Hays & Nicoulin, Inc., Ky., 267 S.W.2d 935. As stated in Section 339 of the Restatement, the doctrine is as follows:

'A possessor of land is subject to liability for bodily harm to young children trespassing thereon caused by a structure or other artificial condition which he maintains upon the land, if

(a) the place where the condition is maintained is one upon which the possessor knows or should know that such children are likely to trespass, and

(b) the condition is one of which the possessor knows or should know and which he realizes or should realize as involving 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 in it or in coming within the area made dangerous by it, and

(d) the utility to the possessor of maintaining the condition is slight as compared to the risk to young children involved therein.'

We think it may be conceded that the requirements of Clause (a) have been met in the case before us. The evidence shows that children frequently played upon the tipple with the knowledge of the coal company. It may be appropriate to point out in this connection that, as indicated in the comments to Section 339, in Volume II of the Restatement of the Law of Torts, pages 920 and 921, where the person maintaining an alleged dangerous structure knows that children frequently trespass upon it, the question of whether the structure is attractive is immaterial. In other words, it is not important, under such circumstances, whether the particular child who is injured was upon the structure at the time because he was attracted to it as a place to play, or for some entirely different reason. So, in the case before us, the fact that the Greer boy was using the tipple as a passageway or short cut is of no significance.

The serious problem, as concerns the application of the attractive nuisance doctrine to the facts of this case, arises in connection with Clauses (b) and (c) of Section 339 of the Restatement. It appears that these two clauses are interrelated, in that awareness of an 'unreasonable' risk to children (Clause (b)) has relation to the ability of children to recognize and approciate the risk (Clause (c)). See Comments on Clauses (b) and (c), Volume II, Restatement of the Law of Torts, pages 923 to 925. It would seem apparent that if the risk is one which young children should discover and realize, the risk should not be classed as one 'unreasonable' to children.

Throughout the Kentucky cases, there seems to run the thread of thought, sometimes not clearly expressed, that in order for a structure or condition to constitute an attractive nuisance there must be something in the nature of a hidden or latent danger--a danger that children ordinarily would not recognize or appreciate. Accordingly, we find a fairly definite policy not to apply the doctrine to an immobile structure, except where electricity is involved. Although some of the decisions have been put on the basis of absence of the feature of attractiveness, in most every case it can be gathered that the real basis was that the danger was one of which children should have been aware.

In Coon v. Kentucky & I. T. R. Co., 163 Ky. 223, 173 S.W. 325, 327 L.R.A.1915D, 160, a child fell from a railroad viaduct which crossed a city street. There was evidence that children were in the habit of climbing upon the viaduct. In refusing to apply the attractive nuisance doctrine, the Court,...