Submitted by UncleP on Tue, 02/01/2011 - 10:01
I read an article recently in the Globe talking about how homeowners are now more likely to be held liable for a slip and fall case on their steps or in their yard if they don't shovel their snow off the walkway. I didn't really get it though because it sounds like if someone comes to your door before you have a chance to shovel the snow then you can get sued if they slip on your steps or injure themselves. Is that so? That doesn't make any sense to me. What if I wait two days before I shovel my steps? Is that negligence? Who are they to say I have to shovel my steps the day it snows.
Snow and ice slip and fall cases in MA
I share your concern, but I'm not sure the problem is that large. (In fact, the plaintiffs Bar in Massachusetts is praising the decision as a victory for our residents.) The issue, as I discussed in my last post about slip and fall cases on ice and snow, is that homeowners do not yet know what the courts will consider "reasonable" when it comes to ice and snow removal. Here is what the court said:
We now will apply to hazards arising from snow and ice the same obligation that a property owner owes to lawful visitors as to all other hazards: a duty to "act as a reasonable person under all of the circumstances including the likelihood of injury to others, the probable seriousness of such injuries, and the burden of reducing or avoiding the risk.
Members of the Massachusetts Defense Lawyers Association who wrote a friend of the court brief in this case asked the question we are all now wondering about: How quickly and how often do we have to shovel to satisfy the reasonable person standard adopted by the court? That answer will come from the juries that decide the individual cases that will, no doubt, spring up in the wake of this ruling.
Snow and ice slip and fall cases
The editor is correct, there is not a defined time frame for when a homeowner must clear the snow and ice from his or her home. The
Papadopolous
case decided last summer states "…[A] fact finder will determine what snow and ice removal efforts are reasonable in light of the expense they impose on the landowner and the probability and seriousness of the foreseeable harm to others…The snow [and ice] removal reasonably expected of a property owner will depend on the amount of foot traffic to be anticipated on the property, the magnitude of the risk reasonably feared, and the burden and expense of snow and ice removal. Therefore, while an owner of a single-family home, an apartment house owner, a store owner, and a nursing home operator each owe lawful visitors to their property a duty of reasonable care, what constitutes reasonable snow removal may vary among them.”
The SJC's reasoning hints they will apply a different standard of reasonable care to the owner of a large commercial nursing home than they will to a single family home owner.
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