WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!
The old ‘60s cartoon George of the Jungle featured an earworm theme song that always warned George to “watch out for that tree!” just before he collided with an unforgiving trunk. Tom Kranz discovered that life imitates art.
Grandpa Tom should have watched out for that tree, too. As he pushed his granddaughter’s stroller past the Perkinses’ house, he noticed a limb from one of their trees was overhanging the sidewalk. He moved onto the tree lawn to sidestep the branch, but somehow managed to skewer his eardrum with a twig.
Ouch. But in a case with parallels to Friday’s coffee-shop debacle, Tom sued the Perkinses, claiming they owed him a duty to be sure he did not run into a branch he could clearly see and avoid. And just like yesterday, the court said (albeit it with some legalese), “C’mon, man!”
Even when someone is just walking past your house, they are a licensee, entitled to use the public sidewalk, and you have a duty not to engage in willful or wanton conduct that cause them harm. But an untrimmed branch does not rise to such willful or wanton conduct, and that’s especially so where the pedestrian is perfectly able to see the danger. Tom admitted to an accident investigator that the tree was “easy to go around.” Where a licensee has equal knowledge of the dangerous condition or the risks involved, the court told Tom, “there is no willful or wanton action on the part of the owner and there is no liability to the licensee.”
Common sense… parents, mind your kids. And Tom, for heaven’s sake, watch out for that tree.
Perkins v. Kranz, 316 Ga.App. 171 (Ct.App. Georgia, 2012). While walking in a Gwinnett County subdivision, Thomas Kranz’s eardrum was punctured by a branch from a tree overhanging the sidewalk. Kranz sued Jerry and Nyda Perkins, on whose property the tree was located, claiming negligence. The Perkinses asked the trial court to throw out Tom’s complaint, but it refused.
The Perkinses appealed.
Held: Tom’s case was thrown out. After all, he saw the tree, with its limbs extending over the sidewalk, obstructing his path. To avoid them, Tom moved off of the sidewalk onto the strip of grass between the sidewalk and street. But as he passed the tree, he felt a sharp pain, and eventually realized that a twig had entered his ear and pierced his eardrum.
The essential elements of a negligence claim are the existence of a legal duty, breach of that duty, a causal connection between the breach and the plaintiff’s injury, and damages. The threshold issue is whether the Perkinses owed a legal duty to Tom Kranz. The Perkinses argued that Tom was, at best, a licensee, but Tom said he was an anticipated licensee, and argued the Perkinses had to exercise ordinary care to prevent injuring him.
But the Court said it did not matter what Tom was. “Pretermitting any decision on Kranz’s potential status as a licensee, anticipated licensee, or invitee, he may not recover as a matter of law because the evidence establishes that he had equal knowledge with the Perkinses of the potential danger posed by the tree.” In other words, the Court said, Tom could see the branch. If he was negligent enough to walk into a tree branch he could easily observe and avoid the branch, he had no one to blame but himself.
An owner, the Court held, “has no duty to a licensee to keep the premises up to any standard of safety, except that [the property] must not contain pitfalls, mantraps, and things of that type.” Here, the tree and its overhanging branches were “in no way a pitfall, mantrap, or hidden peril.” Tom should have avoided the danger. He did not. Tough luck.
– Tom Root
Tree and Neighbor Law For Homeowners and Professionals 
What does this do to the myriad of trip & fall cases, where an uplifted panel of a sidewalk leads to injury? Is that not the same thing. Should people not be looking where they are going with respect to the ground in front of them?