Court reverses verdict in trespass lawsuit

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- An admitted trespasser who was clotheslined by a wire cable strung across a wooded path to keep all-terrain vehicles out of a Mississippi County farm is not entitled to damages for his injuries, a state appeals court has ruled.

On Oct. 7, 2000, Eric Humphrey was injured while riding an ATV on property rented by C&D Glenn Farms. In his lawsuit, Humphrey claimed the farm's operators should have known the cable barrier, which he said he didn't see when he struck it at 15 to 20 mph, posed a serious hazard.

The company maintained it routinely posted signs warning of the barrier but that trespassers often tore them down.

A Mississippi County jury awarded Humphrey $100,000 but found him equally at fault for the incident because he didn't have permission to be on the property.

The final judgment against C&D Glenn Farms, therefore, was $50,000. The company appealed.

In a decision handed down last week, a three-judge panel of Missouri Court of Appeals Southern District in Springfield unanimously overturned the jury's decision under the long-standing rule that property owners owe "no duty" to protect trespassers.

"The no liability to trespasser rule is not based on the idea that trespassers are bad people who deserve bad things to happen to them; rather, the rule comes from the recognition that possessors of property are entitled to assume that members of the public will not interfere with those parts of the property as to which there is no implied invitation," the court said in its unsigned opinion.

The case is Eric Humphrey v. Charles Glenn and Dale Glenn.

mpowers@semissourian.com

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