Crosby v. Savannah Electric & Power Co.

150 S.E.2d 563, 114 Ga. App. 193, 1966 Ga. App. LEXIS 686
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedJuly 14, 1966
Docket42091
StatusPublished
Cited by57 cases

This text of 150 S.E.2d 563 (Crosby v. Savannah Electric & Power Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Crosby v. Savannah Electric & Power Co., 150 S.E.2d 563, 114 Ga. App. 193, 1966 Ga. App. LEXIS 686 (Ga. Ct. App. 1966).

Opinion

Eberhabdt, Judge.

Plaintiff’s status. It is contended by the defendant that the allegations of the petition show plaintiff to have been a trespasser. We agree.

*196 In determining the status of a person, that is to say, whether he was an invitee, a licensee or a trespasser, neither his age nor his capacity, mental or physical, is a factor for consideration. Savannah, Fla. &c. R. Co. v. Beavers, 113 Ga. 398 (39 SE 82); Atlanta & West Point R. Co. v. West, 121 Ga. 641, 646 (49 SE 711); Augusta Amusements, Inc. v. Powell, 93 Ga. App. 752, 753 (92 SE2d 720). Consequently, the determination here must be without reference to the fact that plaintiff was a boy fifteen years of age with the mentality of a normal child of eight or nine years.

There are no allegations of invitation to the plaintiff by the defendant, or of the extending to him of permission to climb its power pole. On demurrer, the petition must be construed in the light of these omissions as well as of the averments. Houston v. Pollard, 217 Ga. 184 (121 SE2d 629); Strother v. Kennedy, 218 Ga. 180, 186 (127 SE2d 19); Henderson v. Baird, 100 Ga. App. 627, 633 (112 SE2d 221). It must be assumed that there was neither invitation nor permission extended.

A trespasser is one who, though peaceably, wrongfully enters upon the property of another. In the context here it is one who wrongfully goes upon or climbs the pole of the defendant; or, to state it differently, one who, without authority or pennission from the owner, does so. Permission or consent to climb the pole can not be implied, even if the owner may have knowledge that it was customary for children to play in the area where it was located. Bowland v. Byrd, 57 Ga. App. 390 (195 SE 458). Nor would it matter that the children may have been licensees as to the ground where they played, for extension of permission (express or implied) by the -owner of the ground to play upon it could not include an extension of permission by the owner of the pole to climb it. Cf. Piggly Wiggly Macon, Inc. v. Kelsey, 83 Ga. App. 526 (64 SE2d 201), and Smith v. Jewell Cotton Mill Co., 29 Ga. App. 461 (2) (116 SE 17), where it was held that “[T]he invitee may not wander at will, without further invitation, to out-of-the-way or dangerous places on the premises, or use parts thereof for purposes wholly disconnected from and in no way pertaining to the business in hand or the objects of the invitation. . It could not be assumed that a permission to *197 play upon the land area in the vicinity of the pole would extend to the climbing of the pole to highly dangerous wires some twenty feet above, even if the land and the pole were under common ownership, and much less so when it appears, as here, that the land and the pole were under separate ownership.

“A power company constructed over the land of another, with his consent, its transmission line. The wires were three in number, strung to poles at a height of 22 feet from the ground. The wires passed over a sweetgum tree, the top of which had been cut out to prevent contact of the wires with the tree. The wires were not insulated, and carried an electrical current of high voltage. The tree had sometimes been visited by children for the purpose of procuring the gum which exuded from cuts or abrasures on the tree, but the power company’s officials had no knowledge of this. A thirteen-year-old boy, unusually well-grown for his age, though warned by his father some months previously of the dangerous character of the wires, climbed the tree in search of gum, came in contact with the wires, and was killed. Held, that in a suit for damages for the alleged wrongful death of the boy, the power company is not liable.” Brown v. Panola Light &c. Co., 137 Ga. 352 (73 SE 580). A similar case is Bridges v. Georgia Power Co., 39 Ga. App. 400 (147 SE 589), though it does not appear that the child had been previously warned of the danger, and the same result was reached. Another is Smith v. Georgia Power Co., 43 Ga. App. 210 (158 SE 371), where the facts are similar and the attractive nuisance or “turntable” doctrine was invoked, but the court held no liability to exist. In Mobley v. City of Monroe, 37 Ga. App. 364 (140 SE 516), a pole carrying high voltage wires was located near a water tower. An eleven year old boy climbed the tower and in descending his hand or arm came in contact with one of the wires, as a result of which he fell to the ground and died. Again the attractive nuisance doctrine was invoked, but the court held no liability to exist. In Scott v. State Mut. Life Ins. Co., 24 Ga. App. 232 (100 SE 639), a ten-year-old boy was out picking blackberries and returning along a well used pathway on land not owned by the defendant, stumbled and in falling reached out and caught one of *198 defendant’s sagging wires, receiving severe burns. Again the sustaining of a general demurrer was affirmed.

In Butler v. Brogdon, 110 Ga. App. 352 (138 SE2d 604), a six-year-old child went upon premises where a building operation was in progress and was burned by a raw, bare, uninsulated live wire alleged to have been left over the weekend in an inherently dangerous condition, and the sustaining of a general demurrer was affirmed.

In each of these cases the child was, expressly or by necessary implication, held to have been a trespasser (in any event no more than a bare licensee, where the rule is the same) to whom no duty was owed save that of not luring him into a mantrap or doing him wilful and wanton harm. Leach v. Inman, 63 Ga. App. 790 (12 SE2d 103).

Mantraps. Did the uninsulated wire, covered with a dark weather-proofing substance, leading from the high voltage transmission line into the transformer box constitute a “mantrap” within the meaning of this rule? We think not.

The doctrine of mantrap or pitfall is rested upon the theory that the owner is expecting a trespasser or a licensee and has prepared the premises to do him injury. Mosley v. Alabama Power Co., 246 Ala. 416 (21 S2d 305). A typical example is the setting of a spring or trap gun to stop or prevent depredations by animals or humans, as in Wilder v. Gardner, 39 Ga. App. 608 (147 SE 911). In that situation the owner expects that a trespasser will come, and deliberately sets a trap designed to do injury. It may result from the knowledge on the part of the owner of the existence of a dangerous or hazardous condition coupled with a conscious indifference to the consequences, so that a deliberate intent to inflict injury is inferable (Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Young, 112 Ga. App. 608, 613 (145 SE2d 700)); or from a dangerous condition hidden with sufficient cover to obscure it or to render it unobservable to one who approaches it. Cf. Bohn v. Beasley, 51 Ga. App. 341 (180 SE 656), and see Fuller v. Louis Steyerman & Sons, Inc., 46 Ga. App. 830 (169 SE 508). The hazard is latent or concealed. Central of Ga. R. Co. v. Lawley, 33 Ga. App. 375 (4) (126 SE 273).

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Bluebook (online)
150 S.E.2d 563, 114 Ga. App. 193, 1966 Ga. App. LEXIS 686, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/crosby-v-savannah-electric-power-co-gactapp-1966.