Fortified Mailbox Owners Not Responsible for Driver’s Paralyzing Injuries

In a split decision, the Ohio Supreme Court majority ruled that a rural homeowner, who constructed a “mini fortress” to protect his mailbox, is not liable for a motorist’s debilitating injuries after his vehicle struck the mailbox.

The driver, Cletus Snay, was driving his typical route to work in December 2016 when he hit a patch of black ice on a two-lane country road, according to his lawsuit initially filed in Huron County. An Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper determined that Snay’s truck went off the right side of the road, began to fishtail, struck two mailboxes and overturned.

Investigators later learned that the homeowner of the first involved mailbox, Matthew Burr, added extra support to his mailbox nearly 20 years prior after his previous mailbox had been damaged following repeated instances of suspected vandalism.

As a result of the crash, Snay was left with “catastrophic injuries,” suffering damage to his C5-C7 disc, rendering him a quadriplegic, court records say. Snay and his family sued the Burr family for compensatory damages, as well as for his wife’s loss of consortium and punitive damages.

Huron County Common Pleas Court Judge James Conway granted Burr’s motion for summary judgment after the homeowner claimed he owed no duty of care to Snay and that the driver’s failure to control his vehicle on the regularly-traveled portion of the road was the cause of his serious injuries, court records outlined.

In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth District Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s entry of summary judgment, but Judge Christine Mayle dissented, finding that the homeowner had a duty to install the mailbox in a safe manner and that reasonable minds could differ if the construction of the fortified mailbox was a proximate cause of Snay’s injuries, documents show.

On appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, Snay argued that an adjacent landowner owes a duty of care to an errant motorist who strikes an off-road hazard in the right of way if the landowner knowingly created that hazard and had knowledge of the danger it may cause to a motorist who veered off the road.

The majority disagreed, siding with Burr.

“Because the Burrs’ mailbox did not present a hazard to ordinary travel on the regularly traveled portion of the road and because Snay’s deviation from the regularly traveled portion of the road did not constitute a normal incident of ordinary travel, we conclude that the Burrs did not owe a duty of care to Snay with respect to their mailbox,” Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote for the majority, with Justices Sharon Kennedy, Patrick Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine and Melody Stewart concurring. “And because there can be no liability in negligence without duty of care, we affirm the judgment of the Sixth District Court of Appeals.”

Ken Calderone of Hanna Cambpell & Powell, the lead attorney representing Burr, said the extent of Snay’s injuries from the crash are tragic.

“[O]ur hearts go out to the Snay family,” Calderone told Law.com. “But the law in Ohio on this issue is very clear — and it has been for years. We are pleased with the Court’s decision.”

O’Connor referenced a 1992 opinion in Manufacturer’s National Bank v. Erie Cty. Rd. Comm., which resulted in a fatal accident when a motorist’s view was obstructed by corn growing in the right of way. The court held that, when a landowner uses the right of way in a manner inconsistent with a highway purpose and it constitutes an unreasonable hazard to drivers, the landowner may be held liable for damages for the improper use of the right of way, according to court records.

But the majority points out that Manufacturer’s had a different set of facts from Snay’s case because it involved a regularly-traveled portion of the roadway through an intersection.

However, in Turner v. Ohio Bell Tel. Co., the court held that, if a vehicle strikes a utility pole within the right of way, a public utility is not liable if it obtained permission to install the utility and it doesn’t interfere with the ordinary course of travel.

“Assuming that’s going to be the general rule that the supreme court wants to adhere to … there ought to be an exception when you have a circumstance that a private property owner consciously creates this hazard, very close to the road — this bunkered mailbox post was 1-foot 9-inches from the edge of the road on a 55 mile per hour, rural road that was narrow,” said Kathleen J. St. John, who represents Snay.

“This was affirmative, conscious conduct undertaken by an individual that basically placed priority on protecting his mailbox under a recognized safety hazard,” she continued.

In the dissenting opinion by Justice Michael Donnelly, which was joined by Justice Jennifer Brunner, he wrote that a jury could decide on some of the disputed facts to decide if Burr owed a duty of care to Snay.

He further claimed the court, in Manufacturer’s “clearly stands for the proposition that landowners can be held to owe a duty of care to motorists based on creating an ‘unreasonable’ hazard in the right-of-way,” he wrote.

“It is quite clear that Burr did not build an ordinary mailbox: he consciously constructed a mini fortress to protect his mailbox,” Donnelly wrote. “The Snays essentially argued that after doing so, Burr is not entitled to assert that the mailbox’s causing harm was unforeseeable and therefore he owes no duty to the public. I agree. The intentional construction of an immovable object in the right-of-way raises an issue of foreseeability. For this reason alone, summary judgment was improper.”

Donnelly further wrote that he is concerned that some may read the majority’s opinion as sanctioning the construction of mailboxes that are even stronger and more likely to cause harm than Burr’s, without regard to foreseeable consequences.

“That slippery slope may result in death the next time a driver inadvertently veers off the road and strikes an intentionally indestructible mailbox,” he said.

At the time he was installing the better-protected mailbox, Burr reviewed U.S. Postal Service guidelines, which suggested that a metal mailbox could be supported with 2-inch-diameter standard steel or aluminum pipe that was to be buried no more than 24 inches deep.

Burr acknowledged that these guidelines were for traffic safety, but he still used an 8-inch diameter metal pipe and buried it 36 inches deep, according to the background of the case. He further testified that he packed the support hole for the old mailbox with powdered concrete mix, dirt and stones to hold the support in place. Burr said he was ”fairly confident” the mailbox post would “lay over” if it was struck.

But after Snay’s truck hit the mailbox, the post remained in the ground, according to the allegations. Snay’s vehicle then struck a second mailbox, which was destroyed.

An accident reconstructionist opined that Snay’s truck overturned because of Burr’s heavy metal pipe mailbox support, calling it “a dangerous hazard to motorists” and “a proximate cause for the roll-over.”