Osterman v. Peters

Singley, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This case is the aftermath of the tragic death of Lawrence Bruce Osterman, a four and a half year old boy, who was drowned when he fell into the swimming pool at a neighbor’s vacant house while attempting, with a friend, to retrieve a ball. The boy’s father, as administrator of his son’s estate, and in his own right as parent, brought suit for damages in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County against Mr. and Mrs. Barry J. Peters, the owners of the property upon which the pool was located. At the end of the entire case, the Peters’ motion for a directed verdict was granted and judgment was entered in their favor for costs, from which Dr. Osterman has appealed.

In Hensley v. Henkels & McCoy, Inc., 258 Md. 397 , 265 A. 2d 897 (1970), decided seven months ago, in Mondshour v. Moore, 256 Md. 617 , 261 A. 2d 482 (1970) and in Hicks v. Hitaffer, 256 Md. 659 , 261 A. 2d 769 (1970), both decided less than a year ago and in Herring v. Christensen, 252 Md. 240 , 249 A. 2d 718 (1969), decided less than two years ago, we had occasion to reiterate the Maryland rule that the owner of land owes no duty to a trespasser or licensee, even one of tender years, except to abstain from willful or wanton misconduct or entrapment, since trespassers or bare licensees, including trespassing children, take the premises as they find them. Judge Smith, who wrote the Court’s opinion in Hicks, supra, collected and categorized our prior decisions ex ³¹⁵ tending over a period of 75 years involving injuries to trespassing children, 256 Md. at 669-70. Dr. Osterman, doubtless aware that Maryland is one of only seven states which reject the doctrine of attractive nuisance without qualification, Prosser, Law of Torts § 59, at 373, n. 44 (3d ed. 1964), argues that there are four reasons why this case should be taken from under the rule of our prior decisions and should have gone to the jury on the issue of negligence. First, he relies on the age of the child, who was four and a half.

However, in both Herring v. Christensen, supra, 252 Md. 240 and Barnes v. Housing Authority of Baltimore City, 231 Md. 147 , 189 A. 2d 100 (1963), we declined to make an exception for a three year old child, and our predecessors were unwilling to except a mentally subnormal boy of 11 years of age in State v. Fidelity Warehouse Co., 176 Md. 341 , 4 A. 2d 739 (1939). Next, the appellant argues that the child came on the Peters’ property for the sole purpose of retrieving a ball, and not to play or swim in the pool. We view this argument as inapposite, since it is reminiscent of the concept of allurement, once thought to be essential to recovery in attractive nuisance cases, but now largely discredited in states which accept the attractive nuisance doctrine, McGettigan v. National Bank of Washington, 320 F. 2d 703 (C.A. D.C. 1963); Prosser, supra, § 59 at 374, and particularly the cases collected in notes 46, 48 and 50. Compare, however, State v. Longeley, 161 Md. 563, 569 , 158 A. 6 (1932) which found demurrable a declaration which failed to allege that the hazard was in sight of any place where the plaintiff’s decedent could be without trespassing.

There was testimony that the Peters had vacated their house on 9 May, three days before the accident, leaving the pool filled with water for the convenience of the new occupants, who planned to move in on 2 June. This, the appellant argues, was “almost criminal indifference” to the rights of the Peters’ neighbors. Assuming for purposes of argument that it was an act of indifference, this ³¹⁶ is not the sort of willful or wanton misconduct or entrapment identified in our prior decisions. In Hensley, supra, 258 Md. 397, 412 , we held that a contracting firm which left unguarded a rope dangling between transmission towers, within reach of a 10 year old boy who was injured when swinging on the rope, created “no covert change or entrapment” and “no hidden danger or secret pitfall.” It seems to us that the filled swimming pool may well have been less of a hazard than the dangling rope.