You might indeed consider it non-obvious and surprising -- I certainly did when I first learned of it growing up here. Another classic example is that a thief can sue you if they fall through rotting floorboards on your porch and break their legs.
But we've collectively decided, as a society, that property owners are not just prohibited from booby trapping their properties, but are required to actively maintain them in a safe condition according to reasonable standards.
If there's something a reasonable person would know was a safety risk on their property, they'll be held liable if they didn't fix it and somebody injured themselves because of it.
The thinking is basically -- kids will run around onto other people's property, people get lost, etc. We know kids go where they're not supposed to. Nobody should be risking injury or death just because of that, if and when reasonable safety precautions by the property owner could have prevented that.
In other words, we live in a society, and we have a certain minimal level of active duty of care towards others. Owning a piece of property comes with rights but also responsibilities.
Don't at least the parents of the kid that drowned in your pool while trespassing on your land get at least a charge of "criminal negligence" against them? IANAL, but aren't kid's <14 supposed to be supervised at all times by an adult? And 14+ years old that drowns in a pool for inability to swim is also something that should be blamable on the parents, not the pool owner.
Edit with clarifications after comments: I meant, parent's should be supervising their young kids, or take the risk/blame, if something happens to the kids while they aren't.
(I roamed 'unsupervised' in fields and forest at young age with friends, and enjoyed it. But I was also taught to look where I step, and how to swim)
> aren't kid's <14 supposed to be supervised at all times by an adult
Hell no. A world where a nine or ten year old can’t go roam the neighborhood on bikes with some friends unless adults accompany them would be a dystopia. I know there are occasionally news stories about very-stupid harassment of parents for parenting correctly, but thank god it’s still not the norm.
Being a parent is hard. I would say that half of the US thinks parents are the problem with kids these days and that a good kid should "spend time outside in the neighborhood like we used to", and then the other half will call the police if your child is out of sight because "aren't kid's <14 supposed to be supervised at all times by an adult?"
But apparently there's no duty of care towards oneself to not trespass into unknown conditions, to watch where you're going, or to supervise one's kids?
Following it to its logical conclusion, I guess I'm supposed to put up a construction fence every time I dig a hole? Or stack a pile of wood? But an orange plastic fence can be jumped over or cut, so I guess I need a high chain link fence? But then how do I make the fence posts safe so someone doesn't hurt themselves by running into those? And what about the hazard of digging the holes for the fence posts? Etc etc etc.
This whole topic is essentially a backwards precedent that reeks of the common US anti-pattern of unfunded policy mandates merely pitting individuals against one another and considering the matter solved. If we want fewer people to drown, then make unfenced swimming pools (or perhaps even ponds) straight up illegal, with stiff penalties (I believe they're just generally town ordinance violations with a few hundred dollar fine right now). If we want to take care of people who get injured in such ways, then create a general fund for that. Tying the two together is like some moralizing version of "thoughts and prayers" that really just sets up a perverse reverse lottery where everything is fine until you get unlucky. (see also: all the harm that law enforcement causes and then just walks away from)
(Also FWIW I don't think there's anything "collectively decided" about the current legal landscape. From what I understand these liabilities basically arise from courts having created these theories of liabilities, and the unknown unknown risk comes from not knowing what theories the courts might create next (ex post facto!). If these liabilities had been created by statutory law through the nominal democratic process they could at least be enumerated and thus definitely addressed. But alas)
> But apparently there's no duty of care towards oneself to not trespass into unknown conditions, to watch where you're going, or to supervise one's kids?
No, there absolutely is.
The key word is "reasonable", which I used intentionally and multiple times in my comment.
Every time you dig a deep hole that might be hard to see, yes you're supposed to put up some kind of cones or warning tape or something. You're rightly not allowed to turn your yard into a booby trap, even if it's part of a construction process. (Of course you don't need to put something up while you're working and supervising -- but you sure do overnight while you're away from it.)
We're supposed to watch where we're going, but we also expect to be able to walk across a yard without breaking our ankle because of a hard-to-see hole.
Just like there's a big difference between a hole filled with water where a child could drown (that requires an actual physical barrier), versus a hole where they might fall in but break an ankle at best (cones are fine).
And I don't know why you think a pile of wood is unsafe, that's fine. Why would you need a fence? Unless it's stacked so high you can easily push it over to topple it, but you shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
You're trying to push examples to unreasonable extremes, when the whole point is the concept of reasonable safety.
(FWIW, I happen to agree with you in thinking that tort law is not always the best way to implement this, that there should often be legal enforcement regardless of whether someone suffers an injury, and that injuries should often be compensated out of a general fund. It's tricky though because this would require a level of constant, regular government safety inspections of private property that not everyone is OK with. However, I think the general standard of reasonable safety is nevertheless absolutely correct.)
"Reasonable" is a courts / legal industry weasel word that allows them to kick the can down the road not defining explicit requirements, which is what creates so much of the unknowable liability. This might be fine if we were talking matters of a few thousand dollars, but when we're talking about hundreds of thousands or more, creating a game of life-altering hot potato. And ambiguity would be understandable if we were talking about equitably judging personal action vs another personal action, but what we're talking about here is personal action vs an existing situation that was entered voluntarily.
I do not see that it is "reasonable" to be responsible for any random uninformed person lackadaisically traversing my property as if it's some maintained event space they were invited into with a corresponding warranty of fitness. Yet the courts disagree, and so we're off to the races about what's "reasonable".
Do I need cones for a drainage ditch/brook that has been around for decades? Do I need cones for the 6-8" ruts due to driving through a part of my yard when it was waterlogged? Do I need cones or a fence for a tree that has half fallen down, resting on a neighboring tree, that I've yet to take down the rest of the way? Do I need cones for stumps of cut down trees? Do I need cones for items kept on the ground? Do I need warning signs about possible bees' nests in parts of structures? Do I need warning signs about the high number of ticks due to my letting the grass get halfway to a meadow? Beware of bear because it can hide in my overgrown bushes? These aren't unreasonable extremes, but actual concrete examples.
The world is an inherently unsafe place. We create structure that makes tiny slices of it "safe". Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe, even for those who were uninvited, just devolves into putting up one big fence and "no trespassing" signs while hoping for the best. This is precisely what this thread is lamenting.
Also compensating out of a general fund would in no way require government inspections of private property. We're talking about extremely rare situations here, meaning this could be covered as-is in a statistical manner. In fact it already mostly is by private insurance, except when/until it isn't, with that reverse-lottery dynamic rearing its ugly head again.
(The wood pile example is because climbing on them is unsafe, yet looks fun. It's essentially the same type of attractive nuisance as a swimming pool)
> Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe
I think that's at the root of your misunderstanding.
Nobody is claiming anything can be made completely safe.
But there is a such thing as reasonably safe. To take general precautions where it is possible and economically reasonable, over potential harms you are aware of, or any generally responsible person should be aware of.
And in terms of all the examples you gave, you can probably figure out what that means. And if you can't, you can ask general contractors or HOA reps etc. (if applicable) who have lots of experience.
Sorry, I do not accept this "it's so simple I'm not going to answer". If it's so straightforward to answer in general, then it should be easy for you to answer. Because what I see is a field of unknown unknowns. It would be bad enough if the bar was me knowing that a harm could happen. But rather even if I don't know, a court can just fall back to social bullying with the catch-all justification of "any generally responsible person" should have known. So despite technically not needing to make things "completely" safe, it is effectively completely because the possible conditions for which you can be held responsible for allowing is unknowable without going to court.
I don't know why you'd mention HOAs, as they're generally their own little micromanaged Hells - I'm not looking for an answer that even grass over two inches tall is unsafe because Karen might have a panic attack. And general contractors generally create LLCs and buy insurance rather than preventing all liability ahead of time. At best they react to problems that repeatedly occur in their industry. They're happy to take money to provide an illusion of complete ownership though.
I do mean all of those examples literally. Personally, I can foresee harm in all of those, and they all seem quite "economically reasonable" to mitigate. So do you just mean "yes" for all those examples? (and if so, why didn't you just say so?)
I'm obviously not happy with any of my listed sources of possible harm existing at this here fix-er-upper, hence them being in my head. Which is why I'm working on them before say having guests that I let run wild in the backyard. But it's a bit rich that such extreme responsibility is still legally inadequate because randos can just trespass uninvited (thus unsupervised and unbriefed) and then demand I pay for the results of their poor choice.
And note here I'm not trying to be callous. I have said that there are legitimate reasons for swimming pools to have fences. We're quite agreed that the well-known pattern of kid jumping into swimming pool alone and drowning is a horrible thing that should be specifically addressed. If we were only talking about specific enumerable regulations like swimming pools needing to be fenced, one could run down that list and know they've all been taken care of. What I'm taking issue with is the unknown blanket liability simply by virtue of owning property, especially when you have not held that property out as a place for others to be.
You might indeed consider it non-obvious and surprising -- I certainly did when I first learned of it growing up here. Another classic example is that a thief can sue you if they fall through rotting floorboards on your porch and break their legs.
But we've collectively decided, as a society, that property owners are not just prohibited from booby trapping their properties, but are required to actively maintain them in a safe condition according to reasonable standards.
If there's something a reasonable person would know was a safety risk on their property, they'll be held liable if they didn't fix it and somebody injured themselves because of it.
The thinking is basically -- kids will run around onto other people's property, people get lost, etc. We know kids go where they're not supposed to. Nobody should be risking injury or death just because of that, if and when reasonable safety precautions by the property owner could have prevented that.
In other words, we live in a society, and we have a certain minimal level of active duty of care towards others. Owning a piece of property comes with rights but also responsibilities.