## Facts

- Allendale Mutual Insurance Company owned undeveloped land near its corporate headquarters in Johnston, Rhode Island.
- Guy Tantimonico, Jr. and John McPhillips, Jr., both adults in their twenties, entered the property without permission to ride motorcycles recreationally.
- While riding independently on the property, they collided head-on and suffered severe injuries; neither could recall how the accident occurred.
- The plaintiffs sued Allendale for negligence, alleging failure to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition and/or failure to warn of dangers.
- The plaintiffs argued that Rhode Island’s premises-liability law applied a general “reasonableness” standard that displaced traditional entrant-status categories, including trespassers.

## Issues

1. Whether a landowner owes adult trespassers a duty of ordinary reasonable care on undeveloped land, such that negligence claims may proceed absent proof of willful or wanton conduct after discovery of peril.
2. Whether summary judgment was proper where the record contained no evidence the landowner discovered the trespassers’ peril and then acted willfully or wantonly.

## Decision

- The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for Allendale.
- The court held that, for adult trespassers on undeveloped land, the landowner generally owes no duty to discover, remedy, or warn of dangerous conditions under an ordinary negligence standard.
- The landowner’s duty to adult trespassers is limited to refraining from willfully or wantonly injuring them after discovering their peril.
- The court declined to extend a unified “reasonableness” premises-liability standard to trespassers in this context.
- Because the record lacked evidence that Allendale knew of the plaintiffs’ presence or discovered their peril and then acted willfully or wantonly, no triable issue remained.

## Legal Principles

- Adult trespassers on undeveloped land are generally not owed a duty of ordinary reasonable care regarding natural or ordinary conditions on the premises.
- A landowner’s liability to an adult trespasser is ordinarily limited to willful or wanton injury after the trespasser’s peril is discovered.
- A landowner is not required to anticipate or prevent harm arising from adult trespassers’ risky recreational activities conducted without permission.
- Where no legal duty supports a negligence claim under the governing entrant-status rule, summary judgment is appropriate as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The court upheld dismissal of the negligence suits, limiting a landowner’s obligation to adult recreational trespassers on undeveloped land to avoiding willful or wanton injury after discovery of peril, and rejecting an ordinary negligence duty in these circumstances.


Tantimonico v. Allendale Mut. Ins. Co., 637 A.2d 1056 (R.I. 1994)