SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Parents won’t be liable for injuries their 18-year-old son’s friend suffered when the two rode motorcycles on their property.
The California Supreme Court on Aug. 29 ruled against plaintiff Mikayla Hoffman in a case that tested whether property owners owed a duty of care to someone they didn’t personally invite. Donald and Christina Young’s son Gunner asked Hoffman to his parents’ motocross track in Paso Robles in 2014.
Gunner asked Hoffman to ride in a driveway while he took a warm-up lap on the track, but she drove her motorcycle onto the track in the opposite direction of Gunner. The two collided, and Hoffman sued the Youngs.
Landowners owe no duty of care to someone who enters their property for recreational purposes unless they “expressly” invite them, the ruling says. The court was tasked with determining if that exception applied when a live-at-home child invites someone without the parents’ knowledge.
“Common social convention would indicate that parents often permit a child, even a minor of a certain age, to invite social guests onto the family property,” the ruling says. “However, that convention standing alone would be insufficient to create an agency relationship.
“As the case law makes clear, to constitute an agency relationship the authority delegated must be that ‘which permits the agent to act not only for, but in the place of, his principal’ in dealings with third parties.”
The decision overturned a ruling by the Second Appellate District that, the majority ruled, failed to distinguish between “expressly invited” and “merely permitted.”
“Plaintiff seeks the shelter of this exception. Accordingly, she should bear the burden of persuasion on the point,” the Supreme Court said.
“(The Second District) improperly placed the burden on defendants to show they had prohibited Gunner from extending an invitation in order to retain their immunity.”