Short answer: In Colosimo v. Gateway Community Church, the Utah Supreme Court held that a Draper church owed no legal duty to a 16-year-old who was fatally electrocuted while trespassing on its roof. In Utah, a property owner generally is not liable to trespassers for ordinary carelessness. The exceptions are narrow, and each one turns on what the owner knew.
Most injury claims on someone else’s property involve a customer, tenant or guest. But people are also hurt where they were not invited: a teenager on a roof, a child in a construction site, a shortcut across a rail yard. This decision lays out the rules Utah courts apply in those cases, and it shows how much depends on evidence of the owner’s knowledge.
What Happened
The case is Colosimo v. Gateway Community Church, 2018 UT 26, decided June 26, 2018. In 2012, a 16-year-old and two cousins went “roofing,” climbing onto roofs after dark. They used a permanently fixed ladder to reach the roof of a one-story building the church owned in Draper. No one had given them permission.
An oval sign on the building had been improperly wired, and the metal flashing on the roof had become electrified. The boys felt shocks and decided to climb down. On the way, the teen’s foot caught between the ladder and the flashing. He was electrocuted for 10 to 15 seconds and died ten days later.
A city building inspector who looked at the roof afterward found nothing wrong. A fire marshal eventually traced the current to the sign. The teen’s parents sued the church for wrongful death. The trial court granted summary judgment for the church, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
The Starting Rule: Trespassers Are Owed Little
Utah decides what a property owner owes a person by first asking whether that person is an invitee, a licensee or a trespasser. A trespasser is someone on the land without the owner’s consent or another legal privilege to be there. For trespassers, Utah follows the rule that an owner “is not liable to trespassers for physical harm caused by his failure to exercise reasonable care,” subject to specific exceptions. Since no one disputed that the teen was trespassing, the family had to fit the case into one of those exceptions.
Exception 1: Constant Trespassers in One Spot
An owner who knows, or should know, that trespassers “constantly intrude upon a limited area” can owe them a duty regarding highly dangerous conditions there. The family showed the church knew of two earlier trespasses on the roof, in 2004 and 2010, plus loitering, graffiti, littering and break-ins elsewhere on the property.
The court held that was not enough. Two known incidents over more than a decade were not “regular, persistent, or habitual” intrusion. And trespassing in other parts of the property did not count, because the rule requires knowledge that people keep entering “some particular place” where the danger is.
Exception 2: Attractive Nuisance for Children
Utah uses the Restatement’s five-part test for child trespassers, often called the attractive nuisance doctrine. Among other things, the owner must know or have reason to know that children are likely to trespass where the condition is, and must know or have reason to know of the condition itself and its serious risk.
On the first point, the court sided with the family. It said “likely to trespass” is a lower threshold than constant trespassing, and the evidence might have been enough. But the claim failed on the second point. There was no evidence the church knew, or had reason to know, that the sign was miswired or that the flashing was electrified. The church knew the sign had stopped working about a month earlier, but the court held that did not support an inference that it knew the roof had become dangerous.
A City Code Violation Did Not Create a Duty
The family also argued that Draper’s sign ordinance, which requires signs to be kept in safe condition and in compliance with electrical codes, created a duty. The court agreed that governments can create tort duties by statute or ordinance, and that violating a safety standard is often evidence of negligence. But before a code can set the standard of care, the plaintiff must show it was meant to protect people like the plaintiff from the kind of harm that happened. This ordinance was aimed at the public at large, with nothing about trespassers or roofs, so it did not create a duty to the teen.
What This Means for You and Your Family
- Your status on the property shapes the whole case. A customer or invited guest is owed far more than a trespasser. Whether a person was invited, permitted or trespassing can itself be disputed, so the facts of how and why someone was there matter.
- The owner’s knowledge is often decisive. In Colosimo, the church’s lack of knowledge about the wiring ended the case. Police calls, complaints, security reports, repair requests and prior incidents at the exact spot are the kind of evidence that can show what an owner knew.
- Children get more protection, but not automatic protection. The attractive nuisance rule has five elements, and all five must be proven.
- A code violation helps only if the code protects you. The question is whether the rule was written to protect people in your position from your kind of injury.
- Other parties may be involved. The court noted the sign had been improperly installed, and the church said it did not install it. The case before the court was only against the owner.
Limits of the Ruling
Colosimo applies to trespassers. It does not reduce what owners owe customers, tenants and invited guests. The court decided the case on summary judgment, meaning the family’s evidence was not enough to reach a jury; different evidence of what an owner knew could produce a different result. We have not found a later Utah appellate decision or statute changing these holdings.
If a family member died, Utah’s deadline to file a wrongful death lawsuit is generally two years (Utah Code 78B-2-304(3)). See our guides to wrongful death claims in Utah and injury claims for children, and our premises liability page for the rules that apply to invited visitors.
Talk to a Utah Premises Liability Attorney
When someone is hurt where they were not invited, the case often depends on records that show what the owner knew and when. We can look at how the injury happened and who else may share responsibility.
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