Roadside Hazards and Ohio Law: Why Snay v. Burr Limits Claims Against Landowners

Published December 21, 2021 · Ohio Supreme Court

Every winter, someone in the Miami Valley hits a patch of black ice on a country road, slides off the pavement, and strikes something solid: a tree, a utility pole, a culvert, a mailbox. Sometimes the object is ordinary. Sometimes it has been built in a way that seems almost designed to turn a slide into a catastrophe. Families in that situation reasonably ask whether the person who put it there bears any responsibility.

On November 24, 2021, the Supreme Court of Ohio answered that question for most roadside objects, and the answer is not a good one for injured drivers. In Snay v. Burr, Slip Opinion No. 2021-Ohio-4113, a 5-2 majority held that a landowner next to a public road generally owes no duty to a motorist who leaves the road and strikes an object in the right-of-way. With winter driving season here, it is worth understanding what the decision says and what options remain.

What happened

On a sunny December afternoon in 2016, Cletus Snay was driving to work on Young Road, a two-lane country road in Huron County that he had driven without incident for five years. The road was wet and icy, with patches of black ice. His pickup went off the right side of the road, began to fishtail, struck two mailboxes, and rolled over. Mr. Snay suffered injuries to his cervical spine that left him quadriplegic.

The first mailbox belonged to the defendants. After repeated vandalism, the owner had mounted it on an eight-inch-diameter metal pipe buried 36 inches deep and packed with concrete mix, dirt, and stones. The Postal Service guidelines he had obtained recommended a two-inch support buried no more than 24 inches. The Snays' accident reconstructionist concluded that the unyielding mailbox support caused the truck to roll. After the crash, that mailbox post was still standing; the second mailbox the truck hit was destroyed.

The trial court granted summary judgment for the landowners, and the Sixth District Court of Appeals affirmed over a dissent.

What the Court held

Negligence requires a duty, and whether a duty exists is a question of law for the court. The Supreme Court held that an adjacent landowner's duty to motorists covers only conditions in the right-of-way that make ordinary travel on the regularly traveled portion of the road unsafe. In the words of the Court's syllabus, there is no duty if the object "does not affect the safety of ordinary travel on the regularly traveled portion of the road."

The mailbox did not affect anyone driving on Young Road. It was a hazard only to a vehicle that left the road. The Court treated sliding off the road on black ice as neither expected nor a normal incident of travel, and it held that the owner's knowledge that his mailbox did not follow the Postal Service's nonbinding guidelines did not change the result.

The Snays also asked the Court to adopt Section 368 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, an influential summary of tort law published by the American Law Institute. That section would make landowners subject to liability for artificial conditions near a highway that endanger travelers who "foreseeably deviate" from the road in the ordinary course of travel. The Court declined to adopt it, reasoning that even Section 368 would not reach a driver who skids off on ice.

Because there was no duty, the Court never reached the other questions in the case, including whether the open-and-obvious doctrine applied or whether the reconstructionist's opinion created a jury question on causation.

The dissent

Justice Donnelly, joined by Justice Brunner, would have let a jury decide the case. The dissent pointed out that the right-of-way is land devoted to transportation, that the owner deliberately built what the dissent called "a mini fortress" there for reasons unrelated to transportation, and that an immovable object in the right-of-way could be found to be an unreasonable hazard. The dissent warned that the majority's rule might be read to allow even stronger, more dangerous mailboxes, and concluded that the Snays "should have the opportunity to try" to prove their case.

Where roadside claims can still succeed

Snay closes many doors, but not all of them. The decision itself identifies situations where a roadside-object claim remains viable:

• Objects that affect ordinary travel. If a condition in the right-of-way endangers drivers who stay on the road, such as vegetation or a structure that blocks the view of cross-traffic at an intersection, the landowner's duty is still in play. The Court also noted that a landowner who knows of such a hazard may be liable even when the government does not know.
• Areas that are part of ordinary travel. The Court pointed to the Sixth District's decision in Swaisgood v. Puder, 2007-Ohio-307, where a utility pole stood in an unpaved area at a truck-stop intersection that large trucks regularly crossed when turning. Because that ground was part of the ordinary path of non-errant vehicles, a jury could decide whether the pole was placed unreasonably close. Evidence of prior strikes and engineering testimony about turning paths made the difference.
• Claims against other drivers. If another vehicle forced you off the road, crowded your lane, or caused the chain of events, that driver's liability coverage, and your own uninsured-motorist coverage if the driver was uninsured or fled, may be available.
• Defects in the road itself. When a pothole, washout, or other defect in the pavement caused the loss of control, the claim may lie against the city, county, or state responsible for the road, under rules I explained in our post on potholes and road defects.

Snay also builds on earlier decisions involving utility poles, including the case discussed in our 2016 post on a utility-pole crash. The common thread is the same: the focus is on whether the object interferes with the usual and ordinary course of travel.

What this means for you

If you or a family member was seriously hurt after sliding off an icy road, the strength of a claim now depends heavily on the details: exactly where the vehicle left the pavement, whether the area is one that ordinary traffic uses, whether another driver played a role, and whether the road itself was defective. Those facts have to be captured quickly, with scene photographs, measurements, the crash report, and the vehicle's event data, before snowplows, repairs, and replaced mailboxes erase them. Our post on winter crashes and icy roads covers how fault is assessed in these cases, and our guide chapter on what your case is worth explains how fault and damages interact once a claim exists.

Snay is a hard decision for a man who will live the rest of his life with a catastrophic injury, and it is fair to say so. It is also a reason not to assume that a single-vehicle winter crash leaves you with nothing. Our Dayton car accident practice looks at every possible source of recovery before reaching that conclusion.