Can a landowner be held liable for failure to maintain a fence around a house?

Plaintiffs acknowledge that recreational use immunity was not at issue in Schropp v. Solzman (Iowa 1982) 314 N.W.2d 413, which held an absentee landowner was liable for failure to maintain a berm which broke and damaged the neighbors' home after years of neglect by the defendant landowner and erosion from trespassers riding vehicles over it. Plaintiffs suggestwithout foundationthat, since the Iowa recreational immunity statute was enacted 11 years before the court opinion, the failure to raise it must mean that the lawyers and judges knew it did not apply.

[4 Cal.App.5th 22]

Harrison v. Middlesex Water Co . (1979) 403 A.2d 910, 80 N.J. 391 held the New Jersey recreational use statute did not immunize a landowner from liability for the drowning of a victim who entered the land upon hearing cries of help from two teens who fell through ice while skating on a reservoir. The court held the statute inapplicable because (1) it did not apply to land in populated residential neighborhoods, and (2) the victim died in the course of an activity (rescue) that was the very antithesis of recreational activity.

Thus, the out-of-state cases do not help plaintiffs in this appeal.