Case Name: Kosmalski v St. John’s Lutheran Church, __ Mich App __ (2004)
Issue: Was a teenage volunteer at a vacation bible school a licensee or an invitee; Whether a plain glass (rather than safety glass) door was an open and obvious condition to a minor.
Court: Michigan Court of Appeals. Published.
Holding: Plaintiff was a minor who volunteered to watch children at Defendant’s vacation bible school. Plaintiff was chasing a child from the playground into the church building. As the child pulled open a glass door, Plaintiff’s extended arm came into contact with it. As a result, the glass shattered, cutting Plaintiff’s forearm from her wrist to her elbow and causing nerve damage.
Plaintiff sued, claiming that Defendant should have replaced the plain glass in the door with safety glass or warned her about the plain glass. Plaintiff also claimed that she was an invitee (there for a commercial or business purpose), who was entitled to greater duties from Defendant than a mere licensee (social guest).
The Court of Appeals had to decide if Plaintiff was at the church for a business purpose (and therefore an invitee) or not (and therefore a licensee). The Court concluded that Plaintiff provided childcare services for purposes of a spiritual, religious or social nature, rather than for any material or commercial purpose. Similarly, “although this may have relieved Defendant of potentially paying for the service if volunteers could not be secured, the fact remains that Defendant’s purpose for inviting Plaintiff as a volunteer was indisputably noncommercial.” Therefore, Plaintiff was a mere licensee.
In regard to the open and obvious defense, the Court held “Michigan law requires that a landowner owes a licensee a duty to warn the licensee of any hidden dangers the owner knows or has reason to know of, if the hidden danger involves an unreasonable risk of harm and the licensee does not know or have reason to know of the hidden danger and the risk involved.”
Due, in part, to the testimony of a church council member who raised a concern about plain glass in a door in the old part of the church which children passed through, the Court held that there was a “question of material fact” regarding what Defendant knew or should have known about glass doors. Moreover, since (1) the door at issue was regularly used by children, (2) Plaintiff was a teenager, and (3) the law provides that a landowner is required to take into consideration that a child’s ability to “appreciate the full extent of the risk” is different from an adult, there was also a question of fact as to “whether the hidden danger of a glass door presents an unreasonable risk of harm.”
Therefore, the trial court’s dismissal was reversed, and the case was remanded for trial.
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