Joseph Tincani, Respondents v. Inland Empire Zoological Society, Petitioner

Summary

The Washington Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded for a new trial in a premises liability action brought on behalf of a 14-year-old who fell approximately 20 feet from a rock outcropping at a zoo. It held that Washington retains the common law invitee/licensee/trespasser classifications to determine a landowner's duty, rejecting a general duty of reasonable care owed to children regardless of age or status. Because the jury found Tincani was a licensee at the cliff yet also found the Zoo partially at fault, the special verdict was irreconcilably inconsistent and only a new trial could resolve the conflict. The court further held Tincani's conduct amounted to implied unreasonable, not implied primary, assumption of risk, so it operates as a comparative fault reduction rather than a complete bar to recovery.