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13. Will the plaintiff recover a judgment against the drug store?
The plaintiff sued the drug store to recover damages for the injuries he sustained in the fall. The jurisdiction has adopted a rule of pure comparative negligence, and it follows traditional common-law rules governing the duties of a land possessor.
A plaintiff entered a drug store to make some purchases. As he was searching the aisles for various items, he noticed a display card containing automatic pencils. The display card was on a high shelf behind a cashier's counter. The plaintiff saw a sign on the counter that read, «No Admittance, Employees Only.» Seeing no clerks in the vicinity to help him, the plaintiff went behind the counter to get a pencil. A clerk then appeared behind the counter and asked whether she could help him. He said he just wanted a pencil and that he could reach the display card himself. The clerk said nothing further. While reaching for the display card, the plaintiff stepped sideways into an open shaft and fell to the basement, 10 feet below. The clerk knew of the presence of the open shaft, and had reason to believe that the plaintiff had not noticed it when stepping behind the counter.
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An «invitee» is a person who enters onto the premises in response to an express or implied invitation of the landowner. There are two classes of invitees: (i) those who enter as members of the public for a purpose for which the land is held open to the public (e.g., museums, churches, airports); and (ii) those who enter for a purpose connected with the business or other interests of the landowner or occupier (e.g., store customers and persons accompanying them, employees, delivery persons). A person loses his status as an invitee if he exceeds the scope of the invitation, such as if he goes into a portion of the premises where his invitation cannot reasonably be said to extend. Their status becomes that of a trespasser, who is still owed a duty of warning known trespassers or making safe known artificial conditions that involve risk of death or serious bodily harm that the trespasser is unlikely to discover. The owner will still have a duty to exercise reasonable care in the exercise of «active operations» on the property.
The landowner owes an invitee a general duty to use reasonable and ordinary care in keeping the property reasonably safe for the invitee. This general duty includes the same duties owed to licensees, including the duty to warn of or make safe non-obvious, dangerous conditions known to the landowner and to use ordinary care in active operations on the property; PLUS a duty to make reasonable inspections to discover dangerous conditions and, thereafter, make them safe. The «make safe» requirement is usually met when a reasonable warning has been given. A duty to warn will not exist where the dangerous condition is so obvious that the invitee should reasonably have been aware of it, based on the surrounding circumstances.
D is correct. The store breached its duty of care to the plaintiff, who was an invitee. As the landowner, the store had a duty to customers to keep the property reasonably safe and to warn of any non-obvious, dangerous conditions known to the store, and to make reasonable inspections and make safe dangerous conditions. Although a business may avoid liability when an invitee exceeds the scope of the invitation by entering into unauthorized portions of the premises, the business must still (at least) warn of known non-obvious artificial perils even when the invitee becomes a «trespasser.» Here, even though the plaintiff may have lost his status as an invitee when he went into the zone of «no admittance,» even as a trespasser the store (and by extension, the clerk) still had the duty to warn of the open shaft, which the clerk knew about and had reason to believe the plaintiff was unaware of.
A is incorrect. As explained above, even if the plaintiff became a trespasser, rather than an invitee, by going behind the cashier's counter, this does not absolve the store of liability. Even as a trespasser, the store (and by extension, the clerk) had the duty to warn the plaintiff of artificial, known perils that even a trespasser would reasonably not notice. The clerk reasonably knew the plaintiff would have been unaware of the open shaft, and as such, at least had a duty to warn of its existence, irrespective of whether the plaintiff lost his status as an invitee.
B is incorrect. It is true that there is no evidence that the store/defendant engaged in willful or wanton misconduct. But this is not dispositive in a negligence action, where the question is, what was the duty owed and was it breached? As explained above, the fact that the plaintiff was unaware of a known risk and the clerk failed to warn him of it renders the store liable.
C is incorrect. This answer reaches the correct answer with the wrong reasoning. The plaintiff will prevail, but not only because he was considered an invitee. His status as an invitee might very well have been downgraded to «trespasser» when he went into the no admittance zone behind the cashier's counter. Even in that scenario, however, the store remains liable, as stated previously. As such, the status of the plaintiff is not dispositive here.