Rivas v. Oxon Hill Joint Venture

744 A. 2d 1076 (2000)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P, a deputy sheriff, was going to an apartment in the Oxon Hill Village Apartments to serve a subpoena to a witness in a district court landlord-tenant case. P parked in the apartment complex parking lot, near the unit in which the witness lived. He got out of his car and started to walk across a stretch of asphalt ten to fifteen feet from the sidewalk of the apartment complex. P slipped and fell on a patch of ice, sustaining serious personal injuries. P sued Ds. P alleged that he had been an invitee on the premises and that Ds had breached their duty to keep the premises reasonably safe. Ds filed a joint motion for summary judgment. As a law enforcement officer, P had assumed the risk of his injury as a matter of law, under the common law Fireman's Rule, and that his claim thus was barred as a matter of public policy. Ds also argued that P had been a bare licensee on the premises, that he, therefore, had been owed the limited duty to refrain from willful injury or entrapment. P responded that the Fireman's Rule was inapplicable, that his status on the property was that of an invitee, and that the evidence adduced during discovery was sufficient to create a jury question with respect to negligence. The Court found that P was a licensee and Ds were not responsible for his injury and cannot be held responsible for his injury because he was a licensee and owed him no other duty other than to willfully refrain from harming him or not correcting a danger that he knew would have harmed him. P appealed.