Tort, to recover for injuries occasioned to the plaintiff by driving over a curbstone covered with snow in a private way controlled by the defendants. At the trial in the Superior Court, Mason, C. J., at the defendants’ request, ruled that, upon the pleadings and the plaintiff’s opening, he could not maintain the action, and ordered a verdict for the defendants; and the plaintiff alleged exceptions. The facts, so far as material to the points decided, appear in the opinion.
John L. Thorndike, for the defendants.[[161]]
This case bears no resemblance to Holmes v. Drew, 151 Mass. 578, where the defendant had constructed a brick sidewalk by the side of a public street, partly on her own land and partly in the street, without any line of separation, and so that the whole was apparently part of the street, and the defendant clearly intended that it should be used as part of the street. There is no similarity between such an addition to the apparent width of a public street and the opening of a private avenue or way out of a public street. The private way could not have been, or intended to be, part of the public street, and the separation between them was plain....
The absence of similarity between this case and Holmes v. Drew, 151 Mass. 578, has already been pointed out; but it is also submitted that that case is the first in which it has ever been held that the owner of land was under any obligation to make it safe for a person that was allowed to come upon the land for his own convenience, and for a purpose in which the owner had no interest, whether the owner gave his consent in the form of a permission or in the form of what might, in common language, be called an invitation. Such persons were called licensees, and must take the land as they found it, subject only to this, that the owner must not lead them into danger by “something like fraud.” Gautret v. Egerton, L. R. 2 C. P. 371, 374–375; Reardon v. Thompson, 149 Mass. 267, 268; Pollock on Torts, 424–426....
But as regards persons coming upon land at the request, actual or tacit, of the owner upon business or for a purpose in which the owner had an interest, it was his duty to make it reasonably safe, and he was liable for damages arising from a neglect of this duty. Indermaur v. Dames, L. R. 1 C. P. 274, 2 C. P. 311; Carleton v. Franconia Iron & Steel Co., 99 Mass. 216 (rock by wharf at which vessel unloaded); The Moorcock, 14 P. D. 64 (a similar case); Davis v. Central Congregational Society, 129 Mass. 367 (plaintiff attending a conference of churches at defendant’s meeting-house, an object in which both parties had an interest; also, p. 371, “a dangerous place without warning”); Pollock on Torts, 415–418.
It is this common interest, not the form of the license or invitation, that creates the liability (Holmes v. North Eastern Ry. Co., L. R. 4 Ex. 254, 6 Ex. 123).
The distinction between these two classes of cases is that in one the owner of the land has an interest in the person’s coming there, while in the other the authority to come upon the land is a pure gratuity. It is reasonable that the owner should undertake some duty in respect of the condition of the land when he brings another person there for an object in which he himself has an interest. But there is no reason why he should undertake any such duty when he makes a gift of the privilege of going upon his land. The privilege is only a gift, whether the owner gives it because it is asked for, or whether he offers it first, or asks or “invites” the other to accept it. It may in a sense be said that a person is “induced” to go upon land by a license or permission of the owner, but the real inducement is his own convenience. When the owner asks him to walk over his land whenever it is agreeable to him, and he goes there, he does so because it is agreeable to him, and not because the owner asks him. He is in law a licensee going upon the land for his own convenience by the owner’s permission, and not a person brought there for a purpose in which the owner has an interest.[[162]]
Licensees, however, have a right to expect that the owner will not create a new danger while the license continues, and he is liable for the consequences if he does create such a danger; e. g., by making an excavation near a path, as in Oliver v. Worcester, 102 Mass. 489, 502, or by placing an obstruction in an avenue, as in Corby v. Hill, 4 C. B. N. S. 556, 567, or by carelessly throwing a keg into a passageway, as in Corrigan v. Union Sugar Refinery, 98 Mass. 577, or by negligent management of trains at a private crossing of a railway habitually used by the public with the assent of the company, as in Sweeny v. Old Colony Rld. Co., 10 Allen, 368; Murphy v. Boston & Albany Rld. Co., 133 Mass. 121; Hanks v. Boston & Albany Rld. Co., 147 Mass. 495; Byrne v. New York Central Rld. Co., 104 N. Y. 362; Swift v. Staten Island Rld. Co., 123 N. Y. 645; Taylor v. Delaware & Hudson Canal Co., 113 Pa. St. 162, 175.
The principle of these cases is stated by Willes, J., in Gautret v. Egerton, L. R. 2 C. P., p. 373, as follows: “If I dedicate a way to the public which is full of ruts and holes, the public must take it as it is. If I dig a pit in it, I may be liable for the consequences; but, if I do nothing, I am not.”
The same principle is alluded to in June v. Boston & Albany Rld. Co., 153 Mass. p. 82, where the court speaks of “cases in which even unintended damage done to a licensee by actively bringing force to bear upon his person will stand differently from merely passively leaving land in a dangerous condition.”