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6 Ala. L. Rev. 261 (1953-1954)
The Attractive Nuisance Doctrine in Alabama

handle is hein.journals/bamalr6 and id is 271 raw text is: COTAMNENTS THE ATTRACTIVE NUISANCE DOCTRINE IN ALABAMA In General The liability of a landowner to persons coming upon his land, whether they be trespassers, licensees, or invitees, must be based on a duty to those persons. The landowner owes a compar- atively high degree of care to an invitee, less to a licensee, and to a trespasser only a duty to refrain from wilfully, wantonly, or recklessly injuring him.' This general rule of nonliability to tres- passers is applicable to infants as well as adults,' but in the case of children of tender years is subject to an important exception in most jurisdictions. This exception, known as the attractive nuisance doctrine, or the doctrine of the turntable cases, had its inception in the old English case of Lynch v. Nurdin.4 In this case a child was seriously injured when he fell off an unat- tended cart on which he had climbed to play. The question of whether the defendant was negligent and whether his negligence caused the injury was allowed to go to the jury even though the child was a trespasser. The Nurdin case was cited with approval by the Supreme Court of the United States in Sioux City & P. R.R. v. Stout,' the leading American case on the doctrine of at- tractive nuisance. There the plaintiff, a child six years of age, was injured while playing on a railroad turntable.6 An iron latch which held the turntable in place had been broken for some time, and small children who were in the habit of playing on the table could easily move it around. The trial judge charged the jury: ... that to maintain the action it must appear by the evidence that the turntable, in the condition, situation, and place where it then was, was a dangerous machine, one which, if unguarded or unlocked, would be likely to cause injury to children; that if in its construction and the manner in which it was left it was not dangerous in its nature, the defendants were not liable for negligence; that they were further to consider whether, situated as it was as the defendant's property in a small town, somewhat remote from habitations, there was negligence in I PROSSER, TORTS 609 (1941). 2 38 A-a. JUR. Negligence § 118. 3 PROSSER, TORTS 618 (1941). 4 1 Q.B. 29, 113 Eng. Rep. 1041 (1841). 17 Wall. 657 (U.S. 1873). 6 The use by many American courts of the term turntable doctrine resulted from the fact that this and other early cases involved such a mechanism.

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