Poulin v. Colby College

• Decision Date: 06 June 1979
• Parties: Francis POULIN v. COLBY COLLEGE and Maine Bonding & Casualty Co.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 846

402 A.2d 846

Francis POULIN v. COLBY COLLEGE and Maine Bonding & Casualty Co.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

June 6, 1979.

Joseph M. Jabar, (orally), John P. Jabar, Waterville, for plaintiff.

Vernon I. Arey, (orally), Clyde L. Wheeler, Waterville, for defendants.

Before POMEROY, ARCHIBALD, DELAHANTY, GODFREY and NICHOLS, JJ.

POMEROY, Justice.

Following a three-day jury trial in the Superior Court, Kennebec County, plaintiff Francis Poulin was awarded damages for injuries he sustained in a fall on the campus of Colby College. Prior to trial, defendant had unsuccessfully moved for summary judgment. Subsequent motions for a directed verdict and for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or in the alternative a new trial, were likewise denied. It is from the order denying the latter motion that defendant now appeals. ¹

We deny the appeal.

Taking the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, Quinn v. Moore, Me., 292 A.2d 846 (1972), the jury would have been entitled to find the following facts. On January 3, 1973, plaintiff accepted a ride to work with a Mr. and Mrs. Tulley. Both Mr. Tulley and plaintiff were employed at the Scott Paper Company in Winslow. The plan for that particular morning was to drop Mrs. Tulley at Colby College in Waterville, where she was employed as a dormitory maid, before proceeding to Winslow. Upon arriving at the Colby College campus, Mr. Tulley attempted to negotiate the hill in front of the dormitory in which Mrs. Tulley worked. Due to the icy road conditions, however, the car was unable to make it up the incline. Plaintiff got out of the car and, apparently without any prior request from Mrs. Tulley, proceeded to help her up the shoulder of the roadway opposite the dormitory. After making sure that she was safely on the dormitory steps, plaintiff attempted to re-cross the icy road and regain his footing on the shoulder. He had only taken two or three steps, when he fell and slid down the hill, incurring the injuries that gave rise to this action.

I. Landowner's Duty of Care

Up to this point, the duty owed by a landowner to one lawfully on his land was determined by the latter's legal status. To invitees those persons present on the land through an owner's express or implied invitation, either for a purpose connected with the owner's business, ² or for a social visit ³ the landowner owed the positive duty of exercising reasonable care in providing reasonably safe premises for their use. See Isaacson v. Husson College, Me., 297 A.2d 98 (1972); Orr v. First National Stores, Me., 280 A.2d 785 (1971). To licensees persons who are neither passengers, servants, nor trespassers, and do not stand in any contractual relation with the owner of the premises, and are permitted to come upon the premises for their own interest, convenience or gratification, Patten v. Bartlett, 111 Me. 409, 89 A. 375 (1914) however, the landowner owed only the duty of refraining from wilfully, wantonly or recklessly causing him harm. See Meserve v. Allen Storage Warehouse Co., 159 Me. 128, 189 A.2d 381 (1963).

In the instant case, the presiding Justice, after first defining the duty owed the various classes of persons, properly left the determination of plaintiff's legal status to the jury. See Shaw v. Piel, 139 Me. 57, 27 A.2d 137 (1942); Martin v. Eldridge, 123 Me. 569, 124 A. 73 (1924). The jury returned a specific finding that plaintiff was an invitee at the time of the accident. That finding will not be disturbed absent a showing that it lacks credible evidence to support it. General Motors Acceptance Corp. v. Anacone, 160 Me. 53, 197 A.2d 506 (1964).

There can be no gainsaying that Mrs. Tulley was an invitee on January 3. She was present on the campus at the express behest of defendant for a purpose integrally connected with its business. Defendant, therefore, was obligated to exercise reasonable care in providing her with premises that were reasonably safe for her use. Isaacson v. Husson College, supra; Orr v. First National Stores, supra. Notwithstanding that duty, defendant argues that because plaintiff Gratuitously aided Mrs. Tulley and was not on the campus for any business purpose, he was at best a mere licensee.

Given the condition of the roadway, of which defendant must have been aware, defendant must have know that Mrs. Tulley would be exposed to great danger by attempting to reach the dormitory. It was therefore foreseeable, in light of the relationship between plaintiff and Mrs. Tulley, I. e., fellow passengers in the automobile taking Mrs. Tulley to work, that plaintiff would alight from the vehicle and aid Mrs. Tulley up the hill. By his conduct, plaintiff enabled one of defendant's employees to reach her place of employment, thereby conferring, at least to some degree, an economic benefit upon defendant. An invitation for plaintiff to enter upon defendant's premises is reasonably implied from such circumstances.

We see the facts in this case as not dissimilar from those in Hutchins v. Penobscot Bay and River Steamboat Co., 110 Me. 369, 86 A. 250 (1913) and Tobin v. Portland, Saco and Portsmouth Railroad, 59 Me. 183, 8 A.R. 415 (1871). In Hutchins, our Court found an implied invitation from the foreseeability of a mother, herself not a passenger, accompanying her daughter, who was a passenger, onto defendant common carrier's premises. Likewise, in Tobin, an implied invitation was found where a hackman was injured while aiding a passenger from his taxi onto the defendant railroad's platform.

As will hereinafter appear, it becomes unnecessary for us to bottom our decision that the appeal must be denied on the conclusion reached by the jury that plaintiff was an invitee. We take this occasion to redefine the duty owed to one who is lawfully on the premises of another without respect to his status as an invitee or a licensee.

In carefully reviewing respective counsels' briefs, as well as conducting our own research, we are once again confronted with the minute distinctions that are often espoused by both the parties and the courts in their attempts to deal with the obligations owed by landowners to the various classes of persons legally on their lands. In response to this growing confusion, a number of jurisdictions have abandoned the distinction between invitees and licensees, turning instead to a unitary standard that would impose on a landowner a duty of reasonable care in all the circumstances to those lawfully on the premises. See Smith v. Arbaugh's Restaurant, 152 U.S.App.D.C. 86, 469 F.2d 97 (1972); Levine v. Katz, 132 U.S.App.D.C. 173, 407 F.2d 303 (1968) (Bazelon, C. J., concurring); Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561, 32 A.L.R.3d 496 (1968); Mile High Fence Co. v. Radovich, 175 Colo. 537, 489 P.2d 308 (1971); Pickard v. City and County of Honolulu, 51 Haw. 134, 452 P.2d 445 (1969); Rosenau v. City of Estherville, Iowa, 199 N.W.2d 125 (1972); Mounsey v. Ellard, 363 Mass. 693, 297 N.E.2d 43 (1973); Peterson v. Balach, 294 Minn. 161, 199 N.W.2d 639 (1972); Mariorenzi v. Joseph DiPonte, Inc., 114 R.I. 294, 333 A.2d 127 (1975); See also, Sargent v. Ross, 113 N.H. 388, 308 A.2d 528 (1973); Annot., 32 ALR 3d 508 (1970). The justification for abandoning the historical common law distinctions between invitees and licensees is found in the evolution of our society from a culture centered on the land to one grounded in an urban, industrialized setting. The United States Supreme Court noted this evolution when it refused to incorporate the invitee-licensee distinction into admiralty law.

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 an effort to do justice in an industrialized 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 within a single jurisdiction, the classifications and subclassifications bred by the common law have produced confusion and conflict. . . . 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." (citations and footnotes omitted).

Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 358 U.S. 625, 630-31, 79 S.Ct. 406, 410, 3 L.Ed.2d 550 (1959). The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court echoed similar sentiments in Mounsey v. Ellard, supra,

It no longer makes any sense to predicate the landowner's duty solely on the status of the injured party as either a licensee or invitee. Perhaps, in a rural society with sparse land settlements and large estates, it would have been unduly burdensome to obligate the owner to inspect and maintain distant holdings for a class of entrants who were using the property "for their own convenience," But the special immunity which the licensee rule affords landowners cannot be justified in an urban industrialized society. We can no longer follow this ancient and largely discredited common law distinction which favors the free use of property without due regard to the personal safety of those individuals who have heretofore been classified as licensees. (Citations and footnotes omitted)

363 Mass. at 706-707, 297 N.E.2d at 51.

A further justification for abolishing the common law distinctions was set forth in Rowland v. Christian, supra. Therein, the California Supreme Court, in erasing All distinctions between persons entering onto lands of another, stated:

A man's life or limb does not become less worthy of protection by the law nor a loss less worthy of compensation under the law because he has come upon the land...