## Facts

- Three-year-old David Gerald Warren Foss was injured while visiting Stephanie and Jeremy Kincade’s home with his mother, Peggy Foss, and his older sister.
- The Kincades’ home had recently been moved into, with boxes present and some rooms sparsely furnished.
- While Peggy Foss and Stephanie Kincade talked in the dining room, they heard a loud bang and found an empty bookcase (about six feet tall and three feet wide) toppled in a spare bedroom, with the child underneath.
- The child suffered serious head injuries, required hospitalization and multiple surgeries, and sustained permanent facial disfigurement and possible future eye complications.
- David Foss, Sr., sued the Kincades for negligence, alleging they failed to secure the bookcase to prevent tipping.
- Peggy Foss testified she previously observed the child climb furniture at home and warned him not to do so; the Kincades knew the child was active and that the bookcase could be tipped over.
- The bookcase was discarded before litigation, limiting proof regarding any manufacturer warnings.

## Issues

1. Whether homeowners owe a common-law duty of reasonable care to secure an ordinary household bookcase against tipping to protect a young child social guest accompanied by a supervising parent.
2. Whether the child’s injury from a tipped bookcase was reasonably foreseeable such that a legal duty existed, making summary judgment inappropriate.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for the homeowners.
- The court held the Kincades owed no legal duty to affix the bookcase to the wall because the specific harm that occurred was not reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances.
- The court treated duty and foreseeability (at the duty stage) as questions of law and concluded no duty arose from the presence of a typical household object absent special circumstances indicating likely danger.
- The court relied in part on the child’s mother being present and bearing primary responsibility for supervision, reducing any obligation on the homeowners to anticipate unsupervised behavior in another room.

## Legal Principles

- In Minnesota negligence law, the existence of a duty is a legal question that turns substantially on whether the specific type of harm was objectively foreseeable to a reasonable person in the defendant’s position.
- Landowners must use reasonable care to prevent foreseeable harm to entrants, but they are not insurers of safety and need not guard against harms that are not reasonably foreseeable.
- Homeowners generally have no duty to take special precautions (such as anchoring) for ordinary household furniture absent facts indicating a particular, reasonably foreseeable risk that a child guest will misuse the object and be injured.
- The presence of a supervising parent may be considered in evaluating foreseeability and whether the homeowner must anticipate and prevent a young child’s hazardous conduct.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed judgment for the homeowners because a child’s climbing and toppling of an ordinary, unsecured bookcase in another room was not reasonably foreseeable as a matter of law, and thus no duty existed to anchor the furniture.


Foss v. Kincade, 766 N.W.2d 317 (Minn. 2009)