Olmanson v. LeSueur County

• Decision Date: 31 March 2005
• Docket Number: No. A03-629.,A03-629.
• Citation: 693 N.W.2d 876
• Parties: David C. OLMANSON, Respondent, v. LeSUEUR COUNTY, Shoreland Recreational Cooperative, d/b/a Shoreland Country Club, Appellants.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

693 N.W.2d 876

David C. OLMANSON, Respondent, v. LeSUEUR COUNTY, Shoreland Recreational Cooperative, d/b/a Shoreland Country Club, Appellants.

No. A03-629.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

March 31, 2005.

Noel L. Phifer, Gislason & Hunter, L.L.P., New Ulm, MN, for appellant Shoreland Recreational Cooperative d/b/a Shoreland Country Club.

Thomas P. Carlson, Carlson & Soldo, P.L.L.P., Vadnais Heights, MN, for appellant LeSueur County.

Kay Nord Hunt, Robert J. King, Lommen, Nelson, Cole & Stageberg, P.A., Minneapolis, MN, for respondent.

Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.

OPINION

MEYER, Justice.

In this case we are asked to decide whether the 10-year statute of repose provision in Minn.Stat. § 541.051, subd. 1(a) (2004), applies to claims for negligence based on a landowner's common-law duty to inspect and maintain the property. The court of appeals held that the claims were not time-barred by the statute. We affirm.

Appellant Shoreland Recreational Cooperative (Shoreland) owns and operates an 18-hole golf course with golf holes on both sides of LeSueur County Road 21. Sometime prior to 1989, Shoreland designed and built a golf cart culvert under County Road 21 to allow golfers access to the golf course on both sides of the road. The opening of the culvert is 5 feet wide and 7 feet high and the top of the culvert is located 76 inches from the edge of the pavement on County Road 21. The east side of the culvert is marked by a 2-by-4 board on iron posts located above the culvert opening. Appellant LeSueur County (the county) and Shoreland do not know when the barricade was placed and who placed it there. The culvert opening on the west side of County Road 21 is unmarked and unguarded. Shoreland acknowledges that it owns the property where the culvert is located, and the county acknowledges that it holds a prescriptive easement over the property, which entitles the county to use it for road purposes.¹

In the afternoon and early evening of February 18, 2000, respondent David C. Olmanson went snowmobiling with friends in and around St. Peter, Minnesota. The snowmobilers rode primarily on trails and in the ditches along state and county roads, including County Road 21. On his way home, Olmanson was driving his snowmobile in the ditch on the east side of County Road 21. He decided to cross from the ditch on the east side of County Road 21 to the ditch on the west side. As he crossed the road and headed down the ditch, the snowmobile went off the edge of the golf cart culvert and struck the culvert's side wall. Olmanson was thrown from the snowmobile and injured.

Olmanson brought a negligence claim against the county and Shoreland in LeSueur County District Court. The county and Shoreland moved for summary judgment, arguing that the statute of repose for improvements to real property, Minn.Stat. § 541.051, barred Olmanson's suit, and that neither the county nor Shoreland had a duty to warn entrants of the existence of the culvert. The county also claimed statutory and official immunity. The district court denied summary judgment based on immunity and failure to warn, but granted summary judgment based on the statute of repose. The court of appeals affirmed the denial of summary judgment based on immunity but reversed the grant of summary judgment based on the statute of repose, holding that under the statute of repose, the duty to warn is inherent in a landowner's duty both to maintain and inspect. Olmanson v. LeSueur County, 673 N.W.2d 506 (Minn.App.2004). We granted review on the issue of the statute of repose. We affirm the decision of the court of appeals.

I.

This case comes before us on an appeal from summary judgment. On appeal from summary judgment, we must determine whether there are any genuine issues of material fact, and whether the lower court erred in its application of the law. State by Cooper v. French, 460 N.W.2d 2, 4 (Minn.1990); see also Minn. R. Civ. P. 56.03. The construction of a statute is a question of law, which this court reviews de novo. Ryan v. ITT Life Ins. Corp., 450 N.W.2d 126, 128 (Minn.1990).

When determining the meaning of a statute, we are guided by several principles of statutory construction. Our primary object is to interpret and construct laws so as to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the legislature. Mankato Citizens Tel. Co. v. Comm'r of Taxation, 275 Minn. 107, 111, 145 N.W.2d 313, 317 (1966); Minn.Stat. § 645.16 (2004). When the words of a statute are clear and free from all ambiguity, this court looks only to its plain language. Owens v. Water Gremlin Co., 605 N.W.2d 733, 736 (Minn.2000). If a statute is ambiguous, the construction that avoids constitutional problems should be used, even if such a construction is less natural. State on Behalf of Forslund v. Bronson, 305 N.W.2d 748, 751 (Minn.1981).

Minnesota Statutes § 541.051 (2004), is a statute of repose for injuries arising out of real property improvements.² The pertinent statutory language is as follows:

(a) Except where fraud is involved, no action by any person in contract, tort, or otherwise to recover damages for any injury to property, real or personal, or for bodily injury or wrongful death, arising out of the defective and unsafe condition of an improvement to real property, nor any action for contribution or indemnity for damages sustained on account of the injury, shall be brought against any person performing or furnishing the design, planning, supervision, materials, or observation of construction or construction of the improvement to real property or against the owner of the real property more than two years after discovery of the injury * * * nor, in any event shall such a cause of action accrue more than ten years after substantial completion of the construction.

* * * *

(c) Nothing in this section shall apply to actions for damages resulting from negligence in the maintenance, operation or inspection of the real property improvement against the owner or other person in possession.

Minn.Stat. § 541.051, subd. 1.

Shoreland and the county argue that the language of subdivision 1(a) is clear and unambiguous and operates to expressly bar Olmanson's claim. They reason that (1) the golf cart culvert was completed more than 10 years before Olmanson's accident; (2) the culvert is an improvement to real property; (3) Olmanson's claim is against the owners of the culvert; and (4) Olmanson's claim arises out of the defective and unsafe condition of the culvert. Under these facts, appellants contend, subdivision 1(a) explicitly bars Olmanson's claim.

Olmanson asserts that his injury arose from the county and Shoreland's negligence in inspecting the culvert and their resulting failure to notice that it was dangerous. Olmanson argues that had Shoreland and the county properly inspected the culvert, they would have known that the roadside ditch was commonly used by snowmobiles, and that the culvert created a dangerous condition because it was unguarded and unmarked. Olmanson argues that subdivision 1(c), the "maintenance, operation or inspection" exception, applies to preserve his claim. Specifically, Olmanson claims that this exception preserves the common-law duty of reasonable care owed by landowners to entrants, as evidenced by the use of negligence terminology in the subdivision.

We agree with Olmanson's interpretation of Minn.Stat. § 541.051. It is well established in our jurisprudence that a landowner has a duty to use reasonable care for the safety of all entrants upon the premises. Louis v. Louis, 636 N.W.2d 314, 318 (Minn.2001); Pietila v. Congdon, 362 N.W.2d 328, 332-33 (Minn.1985); Peterson v. Balach, 294 Minn. 161, 174, 199 N.W.2d 639, 647 (1972). The landowner's duty of reasonable care is modified according to the expected use of the land, and the entrant also has a duty of reasonable care, which varies according to the circumstances under which he enters the land. Peterson, 294 Minn. at 174,199 N.W.2d at 647.³ However, the landowner's duty of reasonable care includes an ongoing duty to inspect and maintain property to ensure entrants on the landowner's land are not exposed to unreasonable risks of harm. Pietila, 362 N.W.2d at 332-33; Conover v. Northern States Power Co., 313 N.W.2d 397, 401 (Minn.1981) (owner has duty to inspect, warn). If dangerous conditions are discoverable through reasonable efforts, the landowner must either repair the conditions or provide invited entrants with adequate warnings. See Bonniwell v. St. Paul Union Stockyards Co., 271 Minn. 233, 238, 135 N.W.2d 499, 502 (1965); Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343 cmt. d (1965) ("[An entrant] is entitled to expect that the possessor will take reasonable care to ascertain the actual condition of the premises and, having discovered it, either to make it reasonably safe by repair or to give warning of the actual condition and the risk involved therein."). If a reasonable inspection does not reveal a dangerous condition, such that the landowner has neither actual nor constructive knowledge of it, under the theory of negligence the landowner is not liable for any physical injury caused to invited entrants by the dangerous condition. See Hanson v. Christensen, 275 Minn. 204, 212, 145 N.W.2d 868, 873-74 (1966).

The common-law duty to inspect, repair, and warn is not absolute. This court has adopted Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A, subsection (1), which states: "A possessor of land is not liable to his invitees for physical harm caused to them by any activity or condition on the land whose danger is known or obvious to them, unless the possessor should anticipate the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness." Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A(1) (1965); Baber v. Dill, 531 N.W.2d 493, 495-96 (Minn.1995) (citing Peterson v. W.T. Rawleigh Co., 274 Minn. 495, 496-97, 144 N.W.2d 555, 557-58 (1966) (expressly approving Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A)). Generally, whether a condition...