When their four-year-old child was injured after falling from wooden boards in an unfenced construction site, the parents sued the landowner on the grounds that the wooden boards were an attractive nuisance.
attractive nuisance
Definition
A dangerous condition on a landowner’s property that may attract children onto the land and may involve risk or harm to their safety. Because child trespassers may not appreciate the risks that the dangerous condition poses, landowners have the duty to either eliminate that danger or make it inaccessible to trespassing children.
Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary
Something on a piece of property that attracts children but also endangers their safety. For example, unfenced swimming pools, open pits, farm equipment, and abandoned refrigerators have all qualified as attractive nuisances. Landowners have a duty to keep their property free of attractive nuisances.
Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.
August 19, 2010, 5:11 pm
“At the hearing before the Board of Supervisors two days later, three county residents expressed opposition to the proposed tower. Another resident telephone a member of the Board to convey her opposition. Their comments generally concerned the tower’s possible effect on airplanes using the nearby airstrip, the extent to which the tower might be an attractive nuisance to children, and the possibility that the tower might collapse.” C.J. Niemeyer, Petersburg Cellular Partnership v. Board of Supervisors of Nottoway County, 205 F.3d 688, 692 (4th Cir. 2000).
