We’d like to call your attention to a column by the Washington Examiner‘s David Freddoso outlining trial lawyers’ efforts to make it easier for trespassers to sue homeowners when injured on their property. Last year, the American Law Institute’s Third Restatement of Torts, “an influential source of what lawyers refer to as ‘black letter law,’” dramatically changed the liability standard for property owners. As Freddoso explains, the Second Restatement of Torts, published 40 years ago, said property owners had no duty to trespassers except in very limited circumstances. The new standard says that property owners have a duty of reasonable care toward all except flagrant trespassers. “Flagrant” is not defined.

So how did this end up in the Third Restatement of Torts? The author of that portion, according to Freddoso, was law professor Michael Green of Wake Forest, who is apparently buddies with a man by the name of Larry Stewart, the former president of the trial lawyers’ national lobby group when it was called the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (it’s now the American Association of Justice). Those two co-authored an article last year called “The New Restatement’s Top 10 Tort Tools”, which you can read here, explaining how trial lawyers can take advantage of the new standard. The article ran in Trial magazine, an American Association of Justice publication.

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