This was an action to recover damages for a battery from a spring gun in an unoccupied farm house.
Briney (D) owned an unoccupied house that had been the subject of a number of intrusions over a ten year period. The intrusions continued despite Briney’s efforts to board up the house and post no trespassing signs. Briney then installed a spring gun rigged to fire when a bedroom door was opened. The gun could not be seen from the outside and there was no warning sign that the gun would fire if the door was opened.
Katko (P) entered the house to collect antique bottles and was shot in the leg when he opened the door, sustaining serious personal injuries. Katko alleged that he thought the house was abandoned and had seen it on many occasions with high weeds and had taken bottles from the house on a prior occasion.
Katko brought this lawsuit and the action was tried by a jury consisting of residents of the community where Briney’s property was located. Katko testified he knew he had no right to break and enter the house with intent to steal bottles and entered a plea of guilty to a criminal charge of larceny. The jury returned a verdict for Katko and against for $20,000 actual and $10,000 punitive damages. Briney appealed.
The law has always placed a higher value upon human safety than upon mere rights in property. There is no privilege to use any force calculated to cause death or serious bodily injury to repel the threat to land or chattels, unless there is also such a threat to the defendant’s personal safety as to justify self-defense.
Spring guns and other man traps are not justifiable against a mere trespasser, or even a petty thief. They are privileged only against those upon whom the owner of the real estate, if he were present in person would be free to inflict injury of the same kind. The value of human life and limb, not only to the individual concerned but also to society, so outweighs the interest of a possessor of land in excluding from it those whom he is not willing to admit thereto that a possessor of land has no privilege to use force intended or likely to cause death or serious harm, unless the intrusion threatens death or serious bodily harm to the occupiers or users of the premises.
A possessor of land cannot do indirectly and by a mechanical device that which, were he present, he could not do immediately and in person. The possessor of land may not arrange his premises intentionally so as to cause death or serious bodily harm to a trespasser.
The possessor may take some steps to repel a trespass. He may use force, but only that amount which is reasonably necessary to repel the intruder. Moreover if the trespass threatens harm to property only – even a theft of property – the possessor would not be privileged to use deadly force, he may not arrange his premises so that such force will be inflicted by mechanical means. If he does, he will be liable even to a thief who is injured by such device. We express no opinion as to whether punitive damages are allowable in this type of case.
Affirmed.
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