## Facts

- Donald Livingston owned an oceanfront property in Cape Neddick, Maine, and hired Solid Rock Builders to construct a new house on the property.
- During construction, Livingston lived in a cottage located about forty-two feet from the partially constructed house.
- Livingston invited Leonard Inkel and his family to Easter dinner at the cottage as social guests.
- After dinner, Inkel and his adult son went outside to smoke; it was approaching dusk, cloudy, and raining.
- The two men walked toward the shore in the direction of the new house and entered the dim, partially enclosed structure, which had no lights and was incomplete.
- After walking ten to twenty feet inside, Inkel fell eight to ten feet through an uncovered chimney hole and was injured.
- Inkel did not tell Livingston he was going to the new house, and Livingston was unaware that Inkel entered it.

## Issues

1. Whether a social guest’s invitee status extended, by express or implied permission, from the host’s cottage and grounds to a separate, partially constructed house on the property.
2. Whether, absent such permission, the homeowner and contractor owed Inkel a duty of reasonable care regarding hazards inside the construction structure.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine affirmed summary judgment for Livingston and Solid Rock Builders.
- The court held Inkel was an invitee in the cottage and surrounding grounds within the scope of the social invitation.
- The court held the record could not support a finding of express or implied permission for Inkel to enter the partially constructed house.
- Because Inkel exceeded the scope of his invitation by entering the construction structure, the defendants owed no invitee duty of reasonable care as to the uncovered chimney hole.

## Legal Principles

- A land possessor’s duty to a social guest treated as an invitee is limited to areas within the express or implied scope of the invitation.
- An invitee who goes beyond the invited area loses invitee status for that area, and the corresponding duty of reasonable care does not apply there.
- Implied permission must be supported by objective facts; general freedom to move about the host’s cottage and immediate grounds does not imply permission to enter a separate, obviously unfinished and unlit construction area.
- Summary judgment is proper when, even viewing the record in the nonmovant’s favor, no reasonable factfinder could conclude the plaintiff had express or implied permission to be in the area where the injury occurred.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed summary judgment because Inkel’s social invitation to the cottage did not extend to the nearby unfinished house, and without express or implied permission to enter that structure, neither the owner nor the contractor owed him the duty of reasonable care applicable to invitees for hazards inside the construction site.


Inkel v. Livingston, 869 A.2d 745 (Me. 2005)