Lance v. Senior
| Decision Date | 19 January 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 39844,39844 |
| Parties | Randy LANCE, Appellee, v. Barbara SENIOR et al., Appellants. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Jack E. Horsley and Whitney D. Hardy, Mattoon (Fred H. Kelly, Mattoon, of counsel), for appellants.
Elmer Jenkins, Benton, for appellee.
The plaintiff, Randy Lance, by his father and next friend, brought this action to recover damages for personal injuries. The amended complaint alleged that at the time of his injury, the plaintiff was a nine-year-old boy who suffered from hemophilia, which the defendants knew; that he was an overnight guest in the defendants' home and that on the morning of August 15, 1964, the defendants 'negligently and carelessly permitted and allowed' the plaintiff to play with a needle 'which was caused to and did get into the throat of the plaintiff and was thereafter sucked into the inner part of the plaintiff's lung,' causing the injuries for which the plaintiff sought to recover in the sum of $50,000.
The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that it alleged only that the plaintiff was a social guest in the defendants' home and that the allegation of their negligence was not sufficient to state a cause of action because their only duty was to refrain from wilfully and wantonly injuring the plaintiff. The trial court granted the defendants' motion and entered judgment in their favor. On appeal the Appellate Court, Fifth District, reversed, holding that the complaint stated a cause of action for negligence. 66 Ill.App.2d 41, 213 N.E.2d 616.
The appellate court read our opinion in Kahn v. James Burton Co., 5 Ill.2d 614, 126 N.E.2d 836, as making 'the customary rules of ordinary negligence' control the duties of a landowner to an infant invited onto his land. And relying on Kahn, the appellate court rejected the argument that the plaintiff was a licensee to whom defendants owed only the duty not to inflict injury wilfully or wantonly, and concluded that whether or not it was foreseeable that the needle could cause the injury was a question for the jury.
As the appellate court noted, we held in Kahn that whether or not a trespassing child would be permitted to recover was not to be mechanically determined by ascertaining whether the label 'attractive nuisance' had previously been applied to the factual situation before the court. The Kahn case recognized a trend in the law which conditions the nature of the precautions which an occupier of land is required to take to prevent injury to a visitor upon the circumstances and purposes of the visit and the burden of guarding against injuries. (See Wagner v. Kepler, 411 Ill. 368, 372, 104 N.E.2d 231; Prosser, Torts 381 (3d ed. 1964); Restatement of the Law of Torts 2d sec. 339). But the Kahn case does not decide this one.
In the present case the appellate court stated: 'Whether or not it was foreseeable that a particular thing or condition might or could cause injury to the invited child would ordinarily be a question of fact for the jury who would be properly instructed under the rules of ordinary negligence.' (66 Ill.App.2d at 46, 213 N.E.2d at 618.) In many negligence cases no more than foreseeability is involved. And...
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