Lead Opinion
for the Court.
¶ 1. The instant case presents a question of premises liability in the context of a wrongful death action. The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s holding that the deceased was an invitee at the time of his death and that the plaintiff breached no duty to the deceased under the standard applied to those classified as invitees while on the property of another. We agree the grant of summary judgment was appropriate but disagree with the trial court and the Court of Appeals as to the reason. We find the injured party was not an invitee at the time of the incident, but a trespasser. Because both the Court of Appeals and the trial court incorrectly classified the decedent as an invitee, we affirm only the result.
¶ 2. On May 5, 2007, seventeen-year-old Riceo Handy and his cousin Courtney visited their uncle, Craig Handy, at Bellevue Place Apartments. Craig resided and leased an apartment at Bellevue Place, but Ricco and Courtney did not. After eating lunch, Ricco and Courtney notified Craig they were going to the apartment complex pool. Neither knew how to swim. Craig did not accompany Ricco and Courtney to the pool area. The pool consisted of three different depth levels: three, six, and nine feet. The two boys entered the three-feet-deep shallow end of the pool. Ricco then repeatedly walked into the six-feet-deep portion of the pool, returning to the shallow end each time. On his final venture into the deep end, Ricco purposefully put his head under water while touching the side of the pool. Eventually, he lost contact with the side of the pool and drowned.
¶ 3. Ricco’s mother, Melissa Handy, brought a wrongful death suit against the owner of the apartment complex, A. Wad-dell Nejam, claiming that he had breached a duty to keep the pool in a reasonably safe condition. The trial court deemed Ricco, given that he was a social guest of his uncle, an invitee at the time of the drowning. The Court of Appeals affirmed both the trial court’s finding that Ricco was an invitee and the order of summary judgment in favor of Nejam. Asserting that there was an issue of material fact regarding Nejam’s alleged breach of duty under the invitee “reasonable care” standard, Melissa Handy timely appealed.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
¶ 4. On appeal, we review an order of summary judgment de novo. Kilhullen v. Kan. City S. Ry.,
DISCUSSION
¶ 5. The dissent suggests we should follow some other jurisdictions and eradicate the distinctions between invitees, licensees, and trespassers, but the Court has already rejected that suggestion and has continued to adhere to the traditional categories. See Little by Little v. Bell,
¶ 6. Because the salient facts are not disputed, it is proper for the Court to determine Riceo Handy’s status at the time of his death as a matter of law. Howze v. Garner,
¶ 8. Here, the leasing provision and the posted regulations requiring social guests to be accompanied by the tenant lead to the conclusion that the boys lost their status as invitees and became trespassers when they entered the pool area. Craig Handy’s lease, which he signed as part of his tenant agreement for at Bellevue Place Apartments, states, “The swimming pool, and all other recreational spaces shall be used only in compliance with the rules and regulations for the protection and convenience of the residents of the apartment community. A copy of the rules ... are displayed at various locations within the apartment community.” (Emphasis added.) It is also undisputed that a sign clearly prohibiting guests from entering the pool area without being accompanied by a resident of the apartment complex was posted by the entrance of the pool the day of the incident. “[Although the injured party may have entered the premises as an invitee, he may lose this status and acquire that of a licensee, if not a trespasser, if he exceeds the scope or purpose of the invitation by proceeding into an area not included in the invitation.” Hoffman v. Planters Gin Co., Inc.,
¶ 9. Handy cites two cases, Lucas v. Mississippi Housing Authority,
¶ 10. Other cases which have held guests of tenants to be invitees are likewise easily distinguished. For example, in Thomas v. Columbia Group, LLC,
¶ 11. Given the facts surrounding Ric-co’s entrance into the pool, the only issue to be resolved is whether he was a licensee or a trespasser. Although the duty owed to a licensee is the same as that of a trespasser, Massey v. Tingle,
¶ 12. At common law, a licensee is one who enters upon the property of another with the owner’s implied permission and for the convenience and benefit of the licensee. Hoffman,
¶ 13. The crucial element is permission. See Clark v. Moore Mem’l United Methodist Church,
¶ 14. After determining the classification of the injured party, we determine what duty, if any, the landlord owed. Titus,
¶ 15. The final step is to determine if Nejam breached the duty. Titus,
CONCLUSION
¶ 16. While we agree that Ricco enjoyed the status of invitee when he first entered Nejam’s property, we respect that a property owner has the authority to restrict where his guests, whether they be business or social in nature, are permitted to be. Although the Court of Appeals and the trial court concluded correctly that summary judgment was proper, we can agree with their decision without adopting their reasoning. “[Tjhis Court may affirm the lower court’s grant of summary judgment on grounds other than that which the trial court used.” Kirksey v. Dye,
¶ 17. AFFIRMED.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
¶ 18. Hypothetically, two young men drown in an apartment pool lacking standard, nationally recognized safety equipment and practices. Their drowning reasonably could have been foreseen by a pool owner lacking such equipment and not adhering to such practices. One of the young men lived in the apartment complex in which the pool was located. The other was visiting a relative who was a resident of the complex, but who did not accompany him to the pool. Both suffer the same foreseeable injury, and. both suffer such injury due to the same lack of reasonable care on the part of the owner. However, due to a strict legal classification of entrants onto a landowner’s property, the estate and wrongful death beneficiaries of the youth who lived in the complex are permitted to sue the owner of the property, while those of the visiting youth are not, regardless of whether the pool was negligently maintained. This is the nonsensical effect of a strict devotion to a system of tort liability based on the classifications of invitees, licensees, and trespassers. I respectfully dissent because I believe that defining liability based on these classifications produces unjust results, and that this Court should adopt a unitary duty of reasonable care for land possessors regardless of an entrant’s classification.
¶ 19. Historically, the duty of care that a landowner owed was different depending on the status of various categories of entrants onto the land. Restatement (Third) of Torts: Physical and Emotional Harm § 51 (2012). The United States Supreme Court noted this when it held that there were no licensee-invitee distinctions in maritime cases. Kermarec v. Compagnie
¶ 20. The distinction between invitees, licensees, and trespassers is a product of the common law adopted by this Court. See Payne v. Rain Forest Nurseries Inc.,
It is the thinking of this writer, but not necessarily that of the Court, that this area of law merits further study in the light of present day conditions and it may well be that this Court will in the future abandon the traditional distinctions between trespassers, licensees and invitees, or at least draw a distinction between active and passive negligence insofar as a licensee is concerned.
Astleford v. Milner Enters., Inc.,
¶ 21. What is most convincing, in my mind, is not the growing number of states that are adopting a unitary standard of care, but the inescapable logic that the adoption of such a standard is efficient and beneficial to the administration of justice. Rather than maintaining rigidly segmented duties owed by a landowner based upon the classification of the entrant onto the premises, Mississippi should impose a general duty of reasonable care to protect persons from foreseeable injuries on a landowner’s property. This would place us firmly in line with modern tort law that generally requires persons to exercise reasonable care to prevent or avoid reasonably foreseeable harm. It also simplifies the “semantic morass” that has developed as the distinctions between invitee, licensee, and trespasser have evolved. See Kermarec,
¶ 22. Rather than analyzing the category to which a particular person belongs, courts and juries, simply and directly, should analyze whether the landowner’s conduct was reasonable, and whether the
¶ 23. Imposing upon landowners and possessors a reasonable duty of care to persons on their property is not a novel concept. Jurors have long weighed defendants’ reasonableness in light of the surrounding circumstances in negligence cases, and this Court has defined reasonable care in numerous opinions.
Requisite care remains always that degree of care commensurate with appreciable danger appraised in terms of ordinary prudence and interpreted in the light of the attendant circumstances.... Although the expression and the basis of the rule remain fixed, its flexibility permits accommodation to each particular case. The area of factual doubt with which juries should be allowed to function is circumscribed within a circle of which care is the axis and reasonableness is the radius.
Supreme Instruments Corp. v. Lehr,
¶ 24. Requiring a general standard of reasonable care, regardless of an entrant’s status, imposes no extra duty on landowners. Regardless of what a plaintiffs classification is, a defendant landowner still is required to exercise reasonable care to protect against reasonably foreseeable perils to persons. Whether the classification is in place or not, a landowner still must conform to the same level of care. Additionally, since foreseeability is an integral component in the determination of whether a landowner exercised reasonable care, unforeseeable injuries would impose no liability upon the landowner. If a defendant’s “conduct was reasonable in the light of what he could anticipate, there is no negligence and no liability.” Reaves v. Wiggs,
¶ 25. The Restatement offers another safeguard for liability by classifying one group of entrants as “flagrant trespassers.” Restatement (Third) of Torts: Physical and Emotional Harm at § 52. This covers trespassers whose “presence on another’s land is so antithetical to the rights of the land possessor ... that the land possessor should not be subject to liability for failing to exercise the ordinary duty of reasonable care otherwise owed to them as entrants on the land.” Id. To these egregious trespassers, a landowner would owe only the duty to refrain from willfully and wantonly causing them injury. This extreme classification of trespassers effectively would safeguard against liability to criminal interlopers injured on the premises. Such a classification should continue to be available should the facts of a case warrant it.
¶ 26. I note that the traditional procedural safeguards of summary judgment would continue to serve an important role in the suppression of frivolous claims. If a plaintiff is unable to make a prima facie case for each essential element of a negligence claim, then summary judgment for the defendant would be appropriate. A plaintiff in a negligence action would still have to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, the indispensable elements of duty, breach, causation, and damages. The jury would weigh the facts and evidence and reach a verdict. This is neither rocket science, nor is it revolutionary.
¶ 27. Turning to the instant facts, under our current law, Ricco Handy is labeled a trespasser on the occasion of his untimely death in the pool of the Bellevue Place Apartments. Thus, his estate and wrongful death beneficiaries are barred from bringing an action for damages. Had he resided in the complex and drowned in precisely the same way for the same reason and in the same pool, his estate and beneficiaries would be permitted to bring and maintain a civil action on account of his status as an invitee to whom Nejam owed a duty of reasonable care. Under a unitary duty-of-reasonable-care standard, assuming that the plaintiff could make a prima facie showing of every material element of the negligence claim, the case would be permitted to proceed to trial, regardless of Ricco’s status in relation to the property. Then, a jury would determine whether Nejam had exercised reasonable care in ameliorating the foreseeable risk of someone’s accidentally drowning in the pool at his Bellevue Place Apartments. It also would consider Ricco Handy’s comparative negligence for entering the pool and his being unable to swim. I offer no opinion on the likelihood of success of such a claim at trial; but I believe the facts are such that a trial is warranted. The duty of reasonable care should not be avoided simply because of the antiquated legal classification of someone’s deceased child.
¶ 28. In sum, the classifications of invitee, licensee, and trespasser are outdated and out of sync with our current negligence jurisprudence. Landowners and others in control of real estate should exercise reasonable care to assess and attend to unreasonably dangerous conditions on their property. In determining a landowner’s reasonableness, or the lack thereof, the fact finder must consider the foreseeability of the harm created by the condi
KING, J., JOINS THIS OPINION.
Notes
. Newton v. Magill,
. Alcaraz v. Vece,
. Smith v. Arbaugh’s Rest., Inc.,
. Doe v. Grosvenor Props. (Hawaii) Ltd.,
. Cates v. Beauregard Elec. Co-op., Inc.,
. Limberhand v. Big Ditch Co.,
. Wiley v. Redd,
. Ouellette v. Blanchard,
. Basso v. Miller,
. Wood v. Camp,
. Premises Liability Act, 740 Ill. Comp. Stat. 130/2 (West 2010).
. Koenig v. Koenig,
. Jones v. Hansen,
. Poulin v. Colby College,
. Mounsey v. Ellard,
. Peterson v. Balach,
. Heins v. Webster County,
. Ford v. Board of County Comm'rs of County of Dona Ana,
. Nelson v. Freeland,
. O’Leary v. Coenen,
. Ragnone v. Portland Sch. Dist. No. 1J,
. Tantimonico v. Allendale Mut. Ins. Co.,
. Hudson v. Gaitan,
. Mallet v. Pickens,
. Antoniewicz v. Reszcynski,
. Clarke v. Beckwith,
