Hudson v. Gaitan

• Decision Date: 21 August 1984
• Citation: 675 S.W.2d 699
• Parties: Eilene HUDSON and Lawrence Hudson, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Jose GAITAN and Elizabeth Gaitan, Defendants-Appellees. 675 S.W.2d 699
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 699

675 S.W.2d 699

Eilene HUDSON and Lawrence Hudson, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Jose GAITAN and Elizabeth Gaitan, Defendants-Appellees.

675 S.W.2d 699

Supreme Court of Tennessee,

at Knoxville.

Aug. 21, 1984.

Randall L. Nelson, Chattanooga, for plaintiffs-appellants; Eugene N. Collins Chattanooga, Robert E. Pryor (amicus curiae), Knoxville, of counsel.

Harry Berke, Chattanooga, Robert R. Campbell (amicus curiae), Knoxville, for defendants-appellees.

OPINION

BROCK, Justice.

The plaintiffs, Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, ¹ filed this action for damages against Mr. and Mrs. Gaitan for personal injuries suffered by Mrs. Hudson on the premises of the defendants while she was a guest in the home of the defendants. The jury found the issues in favor of the defendants and the plaintiffs' motion for new trial was overruled and they appealed to the Court of Appeals which affirmed the judgment of the trial court.

The issues arise out of the factual background stated by the Court of Appeals as follows:

"The plaintiffs-appellants, Eilene Hudson and Lawrence Hudson, were invited as social guests to the home of the defendants-appellees, Jose Gaitan and Elizabeth Gaitan, for a July 4 covered dish outdoor picnic. The plaintiffs arrived at the defendants' home about Noon. They parked their car in front of defendants' house and walked down the driveway leading to the rear of the house where they placed the food they had brought for the occasion on a table in the back yard. They were greeted there by Mrs. Gaitan and invited into the house. They entered the house from a deck at the side and were invited to make a tour of the house to view some recent remodeling the Gaitans had done. After touring the house Mrs. Gaitan returned to the back yard while Mrs. Hudson remained in the house while a drink was being made for her. She then started to leave the house with a drink in one hand and a plastic jug of lemonade in the other. The doorway which she used for an exit is located just off the kitchen. The main door swings inside and a storm door swings out and opens over three risers of steps. Mrs. Hudson had not passed through this door before and as she went through the door she failed to step down on the step and fell onto the asphalt pavement at the base of the steps. She struck her head on the pavement, resulting in severe personal injuries.

* * *

"The residence of the defendants is located within the city limits of Chattanooga and the plaintiffs introduced an ordinance of the city showing it had adopted as a building code of the city the 1976 edition of the Southern Building Code. This ordinance was in effect at the time the portion of the defendants' residence was constructed which is served by the steps and was in effect at the time the accident occurred. As pertinent here, the building code provides that every building erected after the adoption of the code shall meet the following requirement: 'All stairs shall have walls with hand rails or well secured hand rails or guards on both sides of the stairs of not less than 30 nor more than 34 inches high. Stairs of less than 44 inches in width may have hand rails on one side only ... exit doorways shall not be opened immediately upon a flight of stairs. A landing of at least the width of the door shall be provided.'

"No hand rails were placed at the steps nor was there a landing the width of the door as provided in the ordinance. The storm door opened immediately upon the flight of steps in violation of the ordinance. This constituted negligence per se on behalf of the defendants. However, this court held in the case of Anthony v. Anthony, 60 Tenn.App. 143, 444 S.W.2d 714 (1969) that 'ordinary negligence' will not sustain a recovery by a guest against his host."

Additional facts to be considered are: The storm door through which Mrs. Hudson passed immediately before her fall had a solid panel at its base making it difficult if not impossible to see through to the steps outside; the concrete steps over which the storm door opened had no hand rail and there was no platform to step onto as one left the house.

The plaintiffs did not allege or attempt to prove that the defendants had been guilty of willful wrongdoing or that they had been guilty of gross negligence; however, they did rely upon the "trap doctrine." The primary insistence of the plaintiffs was that the defendants had been guilty of negligence which constituted the direct and proximate cause of Mrs. Hudson's injuries and that defendants should therefore be liable in damages, that the unlawful condition of the stairs which had recently been constructed caused Mrs. Hudson's fall and resulting injuries. The plaintiffs have consistently urged the trial court, the Court of Appeals and this Court that the doctrine of premises liability should be changed so that the owners and occupiers of premises have the duty to exercise reasonable care toward their "social guests." The plaintiffs requested the trial court to give jury instructions charging a standard of ordinary care but these requested instructions were denied by the trial court and this action was affirmed by the Court of Appeals which stated that, although it found plaintiffs' insistence to be most persuasive, it has no choice but to follow stare decisis and adhere to the old common law rule denying a duty of reasonable care toward social guests. We granted the application of the plaintiffs for discretionary review to consider the proper standard of care to be applied in such cases.

The trial court and the Court of Appeals have applied the rule announced in Walker v. Williams, 215 Tenn. 195, 384 S.W.2d 447 (1964) wherein it was held that a social guest is a licensee to whom the owner owes no duty except to refrain from willfully injuring him, from committing gross negligence resulting in injury to him and from leading him into a trap resulting in his injury. See, also, Anthony v. Anthony, 60 Tenn.App. 143, 444 S.W.2d 714 (1969) in which it was held that "ordinary negligence" would not sustain a recovery by a social guest against his host.

Indeed, this jurisdiction has applied in cases of premises liability the old common law doctrine whereby the nature and extent of the duty owed by the owner or occupier to persons injured on his land was made to depend upon whether the injured person could be classified as an "invitee," a "licensee," or a "trespasser." Hall v. Duke, Tenn., 513 S.W.2d 776 (1974); Olsen v. Robinson, Tenn., 496 S.W.2d 462 (1973); McCormick v. Waters, Tenn., 594 S.W.2d 385 (1980). The appellants strongly urge that we abandon the rigid common law distinctions made between "invitees" and "licensees."

In considering the continuing validity of the invitee-licensee distinctions in premises liability law, it may be helpful to look back to see from whence those distinctions came.

"The distinctions which the common law draws between licensee and invitee were inherited from a culture deeply rooted to the land, a culture which traced many of its standards to a heritage of feudalism. In any effort to do justice in an industralized urban society, with its complex economic and individual relationships, modern common-law courts have found it necessary to formulate increasingly subtle verbal refinements, to create subclassifications among traditional common-law categories, and to delineate fine gradations in the standards of care which the landowner owes to each. Yet even within a single jurisdiction, the classifications and the subclassifications bred by the common law have produced confusion and conflict. As new distinctions have been spawned, older ones have become obscured. Through this semantic morass the common law has moved, unevenly and with hesitation, towards 'imposing on owners and occupiers a single duty of reasonable care in all the circumstances.'

"For the admiralty law at this late date to import such conceptual distinctions would be foreign to its traditions of simplicity and practicality. (Citations omitted.)

The incorporation of such concepts appears particularly unwarranted when it is remembered that they originated under a legal system in which status depended almost entirely upon the nature of the individual's estate with respect to real property, a legal system in that respect entirely alien to the law of the sea. We hold that the owner of a ship in navigable waters owes to all who are on board for purposes not inimical to his legitimate interests the duty of exercising reasonable care under the circumstances of each case." Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 358 U.S. 625, 630-32, 79 S.Ct. 406, 410, 3 L.Ed.2d 550 (1959).

In the Kermarec case, a unanimous Supreme Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Stewart, refused to apply the common law "invitee-licensee" distinctions to admiralty cases and, instead, adopted the rule that vessel owners would owe to all who come aboard a maritime vessel the "duty of exercising reasonable care under the circumstances of each case" so long as he came aboard "for purposes not inimical to" the legitimate interests of the owner of the vessel.

That rejection by the Supreme Court of the "invitee-licensee" distinctions was the beginning of a trend, which has rapidly gained momentum, whereby the courts of last resort in many of the jurisdictions of this country have determined that the common law distinction between licensees and invitees will no longer be followed and, instead, there is recognized a duty of reasonable care which the occupier of land owes to all lawful visitors. The abolition of the licensee-invitee distinction prevents the plaintiff's status as a licensee or invitee from being the sole determinative factor in assessing the occupier's liability; but, the occupier's foreseeability of the visitor's presence and the time, manner, place and surrounding circumstances of his entry continue to be relevant factors in determining the likelihood of injury to him. Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass....