FACTS:
Petitioner Hidalgo Enterprises, Inc. "was the
owner of an ice-plant factory in the City of San Pablo, Laguna, in whose
premises were installed two tanks full of water, nine feet deep, for cooling
purposes of its engine. While the factory compound was surrounded with fence,
the tanks themselves were not provided with any kind of fence or top covers.
The edges of the tanks were barely a foot high from the surface of the ground.
Through the wide gate entrance, which is continually open, motor vehicles
hauling ice and persons buying said commodity passed, and anyone could easily
enter the said factory, as he pleased. There was no guard assigned on the gate.
At about noon of April 16, 1948, plaintiff's son, Mario Balandan, a boy barely
8 years old, while playing with and in company of other boys of his age entered
the factory premises through the gate, to take a bath in one of said tanks; and
while thus bathing, Mario sank to the bottom of the tank, only to be fished out
later, already a cadaver, having been died of "asphyxia secondary to
drowning."
ISSUE:
Whether or not the petitioner's tanks are
attractive nuisance.
DECISION:
The tanks are not attractive nuisance, thus
petitioner Hidalgo Enterprises, Inc. is absolved from liability. The attractive
nuisance doctrine generally is not applicable to bodies of water, artificial as
well as natural, in the absence of some unusual condition or artificial feature
other than the mere water and its location. Nature has created streams, lakes and
pools which attract children. Lurking in their waters is always the danger of
drowning. Against this danger children are early instructed so that they are
sufficiently presumed to know the danger; and if the owner of private property
creates an artificial pool on his own property, merely duplicating the work of
nature without adding any new danger . . . (he) is not liable because of having
created an "attractive nuisance."
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