Background
Elizabeth Gurney hosted a house party at her mother Holly Gurney’s Lewiston home while Holly was away. Holly had allowed Elizabeth to have a small gathering, with restrictions on the number of guests, alcohol, and timing. Elizabeth expected 35 to 40 attendees, but as many as 100 people arrived. The gathering became chaotic, with uninvited and intoxicated attendees.
Several unknown, masked intruders used or sold cocaine in Elizabeth’s bedroom. Elizabeth asked them to leave, but they returned and refused a further request to depart. Zachary Wilson, who had been invited by one of Elizabeth’s friends and had not previously met either Gurney, helped remove one intruder. Outside the house, the intruder drew a handgun and shot Wilson several times. Wilson sued the Gurneys for premises liability and, against Holly, negligent entrustment. The Superior Court granted summary judgment for the Gurneys.
The Court’s Holding
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed. It held that neither Gurney owed Wilson a duty to protect him from the trespasser’s criminal conduct. Wilson had no special relationship with either defendant: he had never met Holly, and his relationship with Elizabeth was, at most, that of a party guest. The Court declined to create a new social-host/social-guest special relationship imposing a heightened duty to protect guests from third-party criminal acts.
The Court also held that Elizabeth did not affirmatively create or expose Wilson to a recognizable high degree of risk that the intruder would shoot him. The record showed no basis for Elizabeth to know the intruder was violent or armed, and she had already tried to exclude him. Finally, the Court declined to expand negligent entrustment beyond chattels to encompass real property, particularly where Holly had imposed reasonable restrictions on Elizabeth’s use of the home and the injury resulted from an armed trespasser’s criminal act.
Key Takeaways
- A social host does not have a newly recognized special-relationship duty in Maine to protect party guests from third-party criminal acts.
- Liability for creating a danger from a third party’s intentional misconduct requires evidence of a recognizable high risk, including knowledge of the perpetrator’s dangerous propensity or a peculiar opportunity for misconduct.
- Maine negligent-entrustment claims remain limited to chattels and do not extend to entrusting real property.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves Maine’s narrow exceptions to the general rule that a person has no duty to protect another from third-party conduct. It rejects using premises liability to impose broad, heightened security obligations on social hosts when an unknown trespasser commits an unforeseeable violent crime.
It also confirms that any expansion of negligent entrustment to real property is not available under current Maine law.