Recently, the Court of Appeals in Young v. Walton Oil, No. 333794, 2018 Mich. App. LEXIS 226, at *2, clarified the “open and obvious” exception to premises liability. A premises owner has a “legal duty . . . to exercise reasonable care to protect invitees from an unreasonable risk of harm caused by a dangerous condition of the land that the landowner knows or should know the invitees will not discover, realize, or protect themselves against.” Dangers that are “open and obvious” are an exception to this general rule. In other words, premises owners will not be liable for injuries caused by dangers on the property that an average person of ordinary intelligence would discover on casual inspection.
The ”open and obvious” exception to premises liability often comes into play when an invitees suffers an injury due to ice on the owner’s property. The invitee will argue that the owner was negligent in warning the invitee of the ice or removing the ice, while the premises owner will likely argue that the ice was “open and obvious” and should have been discovered by the invitee on casual inspection.
The Court of Appeals decision in Young involved the issue of whether ice on defendant’s property was “open and obvious” or whether the defendant should be liable for injuries caused by ice on the property. In this case, the plaintiff exited his car to pump gas at defendant’s gas station and subsequently slipped on his walk to the pump. The court emphasized the fact that the area was well-lit, and entirely cleared of snow in the wake of a light dusting. It found that the ice was not visible, and the inclement weather conditions were insufficient to provide a basis from which the plaintiff could be put on notice of the ice. “As a matter of law; one would not expect an average person to be able to discern a nearly invisible thing on casual inspection.” Id. at 5. Wintery conditions do not provide a broad brush from which to paint ice as always being open and obvious.
The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court for a jury to determine whether the ice in the case was an “open and obvious” danger. If the jury decides that the ice was not an “open and obvious” danger that should have been discovered by plaintiff, the jury will then decide whether the defendant owner is liable for plaintiff’s injuries caused by the ice.
This article was written by Nezar Habhab, Law Clerk.
