Herring v. Christensen, 36
| Citation | 252 Md. 240,249 A.2d 718 |
| Decision Date | 04 February 1969 |
| Docket Number | No. 36,36 |
| Parties | Jeff HERRING, Infant, etc., et al. v. Erwin O. CHRISTENSEN et ux. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Alfred S. Fried, Riverdale (Harold J. Rogers, Riverdale, on the brief) for appellants.
Albert D. Brault, Rockville (Brault, Scott & Brault, Rockville, on the brief) for appellees.
Before HAMMOND, C. J., and MARBURY, FINAN, SINGLEY and SMITH, JJ.
Appellant, Jeff Herring, a three year old infant, by his father and next friend, Roger L. Herring, and appellant Roger L. Herring, individually, brought suit in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County on August 23, 1967, to recover damages for personal injuries that the infant sustained when he wandered onto the property of the appellees, Erwin O. and Edna F. Christensen, and was burned by a trash fire that the appellees maintained on their unfenced premises. The lower court sustained the appellees' demurrer without leave to amend on the ground that under Maryland law appellees owed no duty to the child who was a trespasser or at best a bare licensee.
It is well established law in Maryland that 'the owner of land owes no duty to a trespasser or licensee, even one of tender years, except to abstain from wilful or wanton misconduct and entrapment.' Levine v. Miller, 218 Md. 74, 79, 145 A.2d 418, 421. See Carroll v. Spencer, 204 Md. 387, 104 A.2d 628, 44 A.L.R.2d 1247; Benson v. Baltimore Traction Co., 77 Md. 535, 26 A. 973; Duff v. United States, 171 F.2d 846 (4th Cir.). Appellants agree that this is a correct statement of the law, but urge this Court to adopt a new rule of law as set forth in Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 339 (1965), a liberal version of the attractive nuisance doctrine.
The problem of injury to trespassing children has been before this Court on many occasions. Since 1894 in Mergenthaler v. Kirby, 79 Md. 182, 28 A. 1065, we have uniformly rejected any exception to the rule that trespassers and bare licensees take the premises as they find them. Levine v. Miller, Carroll v. Spencer, both supra; State to Use of Alston v. Baltimore Fidelity Warehouse Co., 176 Md. 341, 4 A.2d 739; State to Use of Lorenz v. Machen, 164 Md. 579, 165 A. 695; State to Use of Potter v. Longeley, 161 Md. 563, 158 A. 6; Balto. City v. De Palma, 137 Md. 179, 112 A. 277. As this Court said in Weisner v. Bd. of Education, 237 Md. 391, 395, 206 A.2d 560, 562:
In our view the rule of the Weddle (Weddle v. Board of School Comm'rs of Frederick County, 94 Md. 334 51 A. 289) case is too firmly established and has been too long unchanged by the...
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Harrison v. Montgomery County Bd. of Educ.
...(1972); Osterman v. Peters, 260 Md. 313, 272 A.2d 21 (1971); Hicks v. Hittaffer, 256 Md. 659, 261 A.2d 769 (1970); Herring v. Christensen, 252 Md. 240, 249 A.2d 718 (1969).12 In other cases, involving dissimilar circumstances, we have modified common law principles without awaiting legislat......
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Austin v. City of Baltimore
...in this Court's rulings which are necessary for our citizens to know their respective rights and obligations. Herring v. Christensen, 252 Md. 240, 242, 249 A.2d 718 (1969). We are not insensitive to the problems sometimes presented by individual cases. We said long ago in Demuth v. Old Town......
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Smith v. Gray Concrete Pipe Co., Inc.
...if the law is to be changed, it should be done by the General Assembly. Otherwise, to use the words of Herring v. Christensen, 252 Md. 240, 242, 249 A.2d 718, 719 (1969), we 'eliminate the consistency and stability in this Court's rulings which are necessary for our citizens to know their r......
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...death of a twelve-year old boy. In so ruling, the Court declined to adopt the attractive nuisance doctrine. In Herring v. Christensen, 252 Md. 240, 241-42, 249 A.2d 718 (1969), the Court of Appeals declined to adopt the attractive nuisance doctrine to save the claim of a three-year old plai......