Wiegers ex rel. Evans v. Fitzpatrick

766 S.W.2d 126, 1989 Mo. App. LEXIS 264, 1989 WL 16429
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedFebruary 28, 1989
DocketNo. WD 40535
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 766 S.W.2d 126 (Wiegers ex rel. Evans v. Fitzpatrick) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wiegers ex rel. Evans v. Fitzpatrick, 766 S.W.2d 126, 1989 Mo. App. LEXIS 264, 1989 WL 16429 (Mo. Ct. App. 1989).

Opinion

FENNER, Judge.

John and Jan Fitzpatrick appeal from a jury verdict and judgment entered thereon in favor of Shawn Wiegers and his mother, Raylene Evans (now Raylene Sharp), upon Wiegers’ and Evans’ suit to recover damages for injuries to Wiegers occasioned by the Fitzpatricks’ negligence.

The facts, as they relate to the events surrounding the injury sustained by Shawn Wiegers are not in dispute. Suffice it to say that sometime before January 8, 1986, appellant, John Fitzpatrick, was informed that a warehouse near where he worked had discarded some shelving. He went to the warehouse and salvaged some of the parts of the shelving which he reconstructed on the back porch of his home. He also found and brought home two metal ladder structures that he assumed had been used to access the tops of the shelves. These ladders had very rough and sharp edges and appeared as if they had been either torched or hacksawed so that they might be severed from another metal structure.

After the ladders were brought home they were generally stored on the Fitz-patricks’ back porch. According to Mr. Fitzpatrick the ladders were used only once to put plastic on the screens of his porch. With the exception of this one use, the ladders were stored on the back porch.

Mr. Fitzpatrick testified that on only one occasion had he seen the ladders other than on the back porch. On that one occasion Fitzpatrick noticed one of the ladders leaning up against the back fence at the rear of his back yard. He asked his children, a son, age 15 and a daughter, age 10, why the ladder was there and was told that the ladder had been used to climb over the fence. The children were told to put the ladder back on the porch and they were told not to use the ladders.

Jan Fitzpatrick testified that prior to January 7, 1986, she was unaware that the metal ladders had been acquired. The first time she saw the ladders was on the evening of January 7, 1986. Upon arriving home from work Jan noticed a shiny metal object as she pulled into the driveway of her home. As she drove into the driveway, her headlights were reflected by one of the ladders lying at the side of the house. She got out of her car, picked the ladder up out of the yard and leaned the ladder up against the side of the house.

Respondent, Shawn Wiegers, went to the Fitzpatrick home on the morning of January 8, 1986, and asked if Jennie, the Fitz-patricks’ daughter could come out and play. Jennie came out, took her books to the bus stop and the two children proceeded to the yard where they were going to slide down an incline in the Fitzpatricks’ yard.

Shawn Wiegers testified that he saw two ladders that day, one in the back where he and Jennie were playing and the other on the other side of the fence lying down. Jennie testified at trial that she got the ladder leaning on the side of the house and stuck it into the ground so that she and Shawn could slide down the hill then climb [128]*128back up with the aid of the ladder and that she had used the ladder for this purpose before the day of the accident that occurred herein. Shawn testified that the ladder was frozen in the ground when they began playing.

The children agreed that they began playing, Jennie first sliding and climbing up the ladder with Shawn following suit. After the second or third time Shawn had slid down the hill he fell on the ladder and lacerated his leg on the ladder’s rough edges. After hearing Shawn scream, Jennie ran to tell her mother.

After calling Shawn’s mother, Mrs. Fitzpatrick took Shawn to the hospital. As a result of the accident Shawn suffered a severe laceration on his leg, Shawn’s mother, Raylene, filed suit on behalf of herself and her minor child to recover damages caused by appellants’ negligence.

In point one of their appeal from the unfavorable jury verdict, the Fitzpatricks contend that the trial court erred in overruling their motion for directed verdict and judgment notwithstanding the verdict because the evidence failed to establish that the injuries to Shawn Wiegers were sufficiently foreseeable to impose a duty on their part, breach of which could be said to have been the proximate cause of the injury-

In reviewing whether the trial court erred in overruling the Fitzpatricks’ motion, this court construes all evidence and inferences therefrom in favor of Wiegers, and determines whether a submissible case has been made. Fricke v. Valley Production Credit Assn., 721 S.W.2d 747, 753 (Mo.App.1986).

Likewise, with regard to deciding whether Wiegers, who obtained a jury verdict, made a submissible case for purposes of review by this court of the trial court’s refusal to grant the Fitzpatricks’ motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, the evidence is viewed in a light most favorable to Wiegers giving him the benefit of all inferences which may be reasonably drawn from evidence in support of their cause of action. Bizzle v. Enterprise Leasing, 741 S.W.2d 84, 85 (Mo.App.1987) Sustaining a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict should be done only when all of the evidence and the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom are so strongly against the plaintiff’s (Wiegers) case that there is no room for reasonable minds to differ. Id.

Both parties agree that this is essentially a negligence action governed by § 339 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. The task presented to this court, however, is the interpretation of the portions of § 339 which the parties dispute. Section 339 is set forth as follows:

§ 339. Artificial Conditions Highly Dangerous to Trespassing Children
A possessor of land is subject to liability for physical harm to children trespassing thereon caused by an artificial condition upon the land if
(a) the place where the condition exists is one upon which the possessor knows or has reason to know that children are likely to trespass, and
(b) the condition is one of which the possessor knows or has reason to know and which he realizes or should realize will involve an unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily harm to such children, and
(c) the children because of their youth do not discover the condition or realize the risk involved in intermeddling with it or in coming within the area made dangerous by it, and
(d) the utility to the possessor of maintaining the condition and the burden of eliminating the danger are slight as compared with the risk to children involved, and
(e) the possessor fails to exercise reasonable care to eliminate the danger or otherwise to protect the children.

Initially the parties dispute what constitutes an “artificial condition” upon the land. The Fitzpatricks take the position that the metal ladder structure was an ordinary physical object, as opposed to a fixture attached to the land or other classic conditions.

[129]*129The Fitzpatricks point out that since the adoption of § 339 in Salanski v. Enright, 452 S.W.2d 143

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Bluebook (online)
766 S.W.2d 126, 1989 Mo. App. LEXIS 264, 1989 WL 16429, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wiegers-ex-rel-evans-v-fitzpatrick-moctapp-1989.