Harris v. Felouzis, 2025 Pa. Super. LEXIS 69 (Pa. Superior Ct., February 10, 2025)
(Kunselman, J.)
The Defendant, Danielle M. Felouzis allowed a 110-year-old tree to grow unaltered on a steep hillside, above an urban highway. The jury deemed that to be a dangerous condition and that her neglect proximately caused harm to James Harris, Jr., when the tree plummeted onto his vehicle. Like the two trial judges who presided over this matter in the Court of Common Pleas of Beaver County, we hold that whether a landowner unreasonably permits a tree to grow in a dangerous condition, near an urban highway, is a factual question for the jury. Thus, we affirm the judgment in favor of Mr. Harris.
The deductive power of jurors is the lifeblood of the negligence test. A jury’s sense of community mores and customs animates the legal figment by which negligence is measured — the so-called, “reasonably prudent person.” Jurors “determine how a reasonably prudent person would act in [given] circumstances.” Stewart v. Motts, 539 Pa. 596, 654 A.2d 535, 540 (Pa. 1995). As such, when the law of torts uses the terms “reasonable,” “reasonableness,” or “unreasonable,” one should read those words to mean in the judgment of the jury.
the American Law Institute has distilled a landowner’s duty with respect to tree and roadways as follows: A possessor of land in an urban area is subject to liability to persons using a public highway for physical harm resulting from [the landowner’s] failure to exercise reasonable care to prevent an unreasonable risk of harm arising from the condition of trees on the land near the highway.
Absent from this subsection is any use of the word “defect” to describe “the condition of trees.” Thus, Ms. Felouzis’s insistence that Mr. Harris, a motorist traveling on a public highway, needed to prove that her oak tree was notoriously defective is mistaken. To place such a burden upon a passing motorist would be nearly insurmountable, because the motorist’s interaction with the landowner’s property lasts mere seconds.
As Dean Prosser explains, the law holds the rights of motorists and pedestrians in high esteem. “The public right of passage carries with it, once the highway has been established, an obligation upon occupiers of abutting land to use reasonable care to see that the passage is safe.” W. Prosser, LAW OF TORTS § 57 at 352-53 (4th ed. 1971). The landowner “will be liable for any unreasonable risk to those who are on it, such as . . . overhanging objects ready to fall.” Id. at 353. Furthermore, it “is scarcely suited to cities, to say that a landowner may escape liability for serious damage . . . merely by allowing nature to take its course.” Id. at 355.
