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O'Guin v. Bingham County6/18/2003
2003 Opinion No. 74
Judgment dismissing action to recover damages for wrongful death, affirmed in part and remanded.
Frank and Leslie O'Guin brought an action against Bingham County, its commissioners, and its public works department for the wrongful death of their minor sons, Shaun and Alex. The County filed a summary judgment motion, which the district court denied. When the County sought permission to appeal, the district court, sua sponte, reconsidered its decision and granted summary judgment in favor of the County. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment of dismissal on the claims addressed by the district court, but we remand the case to the district court for a ruling on the plaintiffs' statutorily-based claims.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In the summer of 1999, Shaun and Alex O'Guin were enrolled in a summer lunch program at Ridgecrest Elementary School. They walked to the elementary school from their home, along Ridge Street to Airport Road and on to the school. On July 7, 1999, the boys took a shortcut to the school across the Ridge Street Landfill, property owned by Bingham County. The boys entered the property where an irrigation ditch crossed Ridge Street, through an opening in the fence, which purportedly allowed access to the ditch company.
On the way home from the school, the boys took the same shortcut, entering from the school property through an unlocked gate. Looking across a small ditch from the area nearest Ridge Street, the O'Guin boys spotted other boys throwing rocks at the walls of the working landfill. The boys crossed the earthen bridge over the ditch into the landfill, and they too began throwing rocks at the slope, causing dirt and gravel to come loose. Shaun and Alex dallied, despite a warning from their older brother, Frank, Jr., that they would get into trouble playing there.
Frank, Jr., left his brothers at the landfill but returned later to find them. He discovered Shaun and Alex lifeless at the bottom of the pit, where they had been crushed to death when the wall gave way and collapsed on them.
In their complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that the landfill was an attractive nuisance and that the County breached certain legal duties to control access to the landfill to prevent children from walking in and playing there. The County, in its answer, asserted that inasmuch as the boys were trespassers, there was no duty of reasonable care owed to them. The County sought dismissal of the attractive nuisance claim and reasserted that the County's only duty to trespassers was to refrain from willful and wanton conduct, which the plaintiffs had failed to plead. As to the claims of Frank, Jr., the County asserted that he did not qualify as an "heir" under Idaho Code ' 5-311 and thus did not have standing to seek damages.
In a decision issued on November 30, 2001, the district court dismissed the attractive nuisance claim for failure to assert facts to prove an essential element of the claim. The district court, however, found that there existed genuine issues of fact to be resolved by a jury on the common law negligence claim. The district court denied the motion as to the statutory claims and the claims raised by Frank, Jr., and provided that plaintiffs could submit evidence on those claims to the jury.
The County requested permission to appeal. In response to the County's motion, however, the district court sua sponte reconsidered its original decision on the summary judgment. On January 7, 2002, the district court issued a substitute decision, granting summary judgment to the County on all claims. The district court found that the status of the O'Guin
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