Shaw v. Wiegartz

No single human act has been so tortured by the law as the simple deed of going onto the property of another and being injured. Courts, in their efforts to refrain from imposing undue burdens on injured parties or landowners, have set up categories and categories-within-categories to designate the “status” of the injured and the “knowledge” of the landowner.

The tangled skein created by the law can only be unravelled by close inspection and this saga is no exception to this precept.

Plaintiff Eve M. Shaw is an aunt of defendant Dorothy Wiegartz. The husbands of each party, though named in the…