A man fell and broke his leg while trying to avoid flowing water funneling down a sloped exit path from a haunted corn maze in October 2013. Michigan’s “open and obvious” doctrine generally precludes liability for a landowner in the event that a hazard on land is “open and obvious,” i.e. readily observable to a person of ordinary intelligence upon casual inspection. This is an objective test. However, when there are “special aspects” of an open and obvious risk that make it an unreasonable risk, there may be liability under the Michigan premises law. In this case the evidence showed that the business running the corn maze may have had inadequate employee staffing and as a result effectively trapped customers in the corn maze during a rainstorm for an hour or more, and then eventually had its employees direct customers to exit through one selected path that was very slippery due to the rainy and muddy conditions. Under those circumstances, the Court of Appeals ruled that a jury may find that the hazard created under the circumstances was “effectively unavoidable,” citing the Supreme Court’s decision Lugo v Ameritech Corp, 464 Mich 512 (2001). Accordingly, the court vacated the summary disposition order in favor of the business and remanded it to the trial court for continued proceedings, consistent with its opinion. The decision is Davis v Lenhart, unpublished Michigan Court of Appeals case 329092, decided September 22, 2016.
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