For a succinct, two-page introduction to this topic, see the Overview of Pennsylvania's Recreational Use of Land and Water Act at the WeConservePA Library.

Introduction

Pennsylvania’s Recreational Use of Land and Water Act (RULWA) limits landowners’ liability to individuals who enter their land for recreational purposes. The purpose of the law is to expand recreational access across the Commonwealth by relieving landowners of certain legal duties that might otherwise exist. RULWA provides that landowners do not have to keep their land safe for recreational users and have no duty to warn of dangerous conditions, so long as no “charge” is required for entrance. This immunity from liability does not protect landowners who willfully or maliciously fail to warn of dangerous conditions; that is, RULWA immunizes owners only from claims of negligence.

This 1966 law, found in Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes, title 68, sections 477-1 et seq., repealed and replaced a substantially narrower previous law that addressed hunting and fishing on agricultural and wooded lands.[1] It has been amended three times by the Pennsylvania General Assembly—in 2007, 2011, and 2018.

While RULWA provides real protection for a wide range of landowners and recreational uses, courts have struggled for decades to clearly define its contours and limits. Accordingly, landowners and easement holders should not rely solely on RULWA, but should, where appropriate, couple its protection with actions and tools like those outlined in the guide Reducing Liability Associated with Public Access.

Scope of Immunity Defense

Premises Liability Generally; Absent RULWA

Landowner liability is not automatic. In every premises liability case, an injured visitor must be able to prove that harm resulted from something the landowner did or failed to do. A landowner can become liable if their action or inaction amounts to negligence—the failure to exercise the level of care that a reasonable person would exercise under similar circumstances—or worse, if they intentionally cause harm. Whether an alleged action or inaction creates liability depends on the specific circumstances, typically the relationship between the parties and the reason for the visit.

Courts have defined levels of care that landowners owe to various types of visitors. Many nuances apply, but the following is a simplified explanation: Landowners owe the highest duty to people invited onto the land to advance some interest of the landowner—for example, the customers of a business. These people are legally classified as “invitees.” For invitees, landowners are expected to make the property safe. A lesser duty is owed to visitors categorized as “licensees”—visitors who enter property with permission, but primarily for their own purposes. A landowner is not required to make the property safe for licensees, but must correct (or provide adequate warning of) dangerous conditions of which they are aware, and which would not be obvious to a visitor. The lowest duty of care is owed to trespassers—individuals who enter land with no permission at all. A landowner’s primary duty is to not intentionally or recklessly harm them.[2] 

The Effect of RULWA

Like every other state,[3] Pennsylvania provides statutory immunity to the owners of land accessed by recreational users. The Recreational Use of Land and Water Act provides that:

An owner of land owes no duty of care to keep the premises safe for entry or use by others for recreational purposes, or to give any warning of a dangerous condition, use, structure, or activity on such premises to persons entering for such purposes.[4]

If people or property are harmed while using property for recreational purposes without paying the landowner for access to the land, landowners can raise this statute as a defense if they are sued for personal injury or property damage.[5] 

RULWA does not prevent landowners from being sued; it limits the duty of care a landowner owes to recreational users who pay no fee for access. As a result, landowners may assert RULWA immunity as defense, often resulting in dismissal of a lawsuit. By extension, widespread recognition of the Act within the legal community acts as deterrent to the filing of claims.  

Absent RULWA, if a landowner allowed members of the public to enter their land for recreational purposes, those visitors would likely be regarded by the law as licensees, or perhaps in some cases as invitees. Accordingly, the landowner might be expected to undertake extensive (and expensive) measures to protect the entrants from injury—continually inspecting the ground for uneven areas that could cause tripping; inspecting tree canopies for dead or dying limbs which could fall and cause injury, or installing extensive signage to alert visitors about known, potentially dangerous conditions: clefts, ravines, deep water, protruding roots and outcroppings, and a wide variety of other normal features of natural land. Foreseeably, most prudent landowners would sooner close their land to the public than shoulder such risks or undertake such extensive measures. Not to mention that many of the most protective measures that could make land “safe”—tree removal, fenced-off watercourses, and intrusive signage—would undermine the qualities that make it attractive for recreational use in the first place.

RULWA offers a balanced solution. In keeping their land open for recreation, landowners are relieved of substantial risk; the duty of care they owe to recreational users is reduced to one similar to what they would otherwise owe to trespassers. Recreational users, while absorbing an increased share of risk, are rewarded with vastly expanded recreational opportunities, and the ability to enjoy natural areas free from liability-driven modifications.

Just as the law does not allow landowners to behave with total impunity toward trespassers, RULWA does not enable landowners to completely disregard the wellbeing of recreational users. Landowners remain liable for injuries where a plaintiff proves that a landowner’s failure to act was “willful or malicious” rather than merely negligent.[6] Willful conduct is performed “voluntarily or intentionally or knowingly, as distinguished from accidental.”[7] Proving this is a heavier burden than proving negligence, and thus plaintiffs are much more likely to have their suits dismissed before trial (typically on a motion for summary judgment) or ultimately to be unsuccessful in their litigation.

Who Does RULWA Cover?

The “owners” of land protected by RULWA include public[8] and private landowners as well as tenants, lease holders (such as hunting clubs), and other persons or organizations “in control of the premises.”[9] Grantees of easements, including trail or fishing access easements, are considered owners for purposes of RULWA.[10]  Holders of conservation easements also are likely protected under RULWA if they exercise sufficient control over the land to be deemed “possessors.” If, on the other hand, an easement holder does not exercise enough control to be deemed a possessor, they would not be subject to liability at all under common law principles of negligence.[11]

Which Kinds of Recreation Are Covered?

The broad range of activities that constitute the recreational purposes covered by RULWA was further widened in the Act’s 2018 amendment. RULWA now defines “recreational purpose” as:

any activity undertaken or viewed for exercise, sport, education, recreation, relaxation or pleasure and includes, but is not limited to, any of the following, or any combination thereof: hunting, fishing, swimming, boating, recreational noncommercial aircraft operations or recreational noncommercial ultralight operations on private airstrips, camping, picnicking, hiking, pleasure driving, snowmobiling, all-terrain vehicle and motorcycle riding, nature study, water skiing, water sports, cave exploration and viewing or enjoying historical, archaeological, scenic, or scientific sites.[12]

Landowners may be initially concerned if a particular activity occurring on their land is not specifically listed. However, the extensive and open-ended list of specified activities signals an extremely inclusive meaning. For example, bird-watching, photography, geocaching, orienteering, kite-flying, sledding, ice-skating, snowshoeing, stargazing, archery, horseback riding, meditation, astronomy, running, bicycling, and rock climbing—while not specifically listed—are all undeniably activities undertaken for “exercise, sport, education, relaxation or pleasure.” Courts have not hesitated to apply RULWA in cases involving a range of activities not specifically listed in the Act.[13]

What Types of Land Are Covered?

The most frequent issue in appellate litigation involving RULWA is whether the property—or the specific area where the incident occurred—qualifies as “land” under RULWA. In the 1980s, courts began reading and applying RULWA more narrowly, regularly excluding land from protection based on the extent and nature of a subject property’s development. The legislature resolved some of the resulting confusion with the most recent amendments to the Act in 2018.

Rivera and Walsh Frame Pre-2018 Decisions

On its face, RULWA applies to all “land”—developed and undeveloped, rural and urban. The broadly stated purpose of the Act is to encourage landowners to make “land and water areas available to the public for recreational purposes.” However, beginning with the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Rivera v. Philadelphia Theological Seminary of St. Charles Borromeo, Inc., Pennsylvania courts have read RULWA more narrowly than its text alone would suggest. In Rivera, the Supreme Court reviewed legislative history to conclude that the true purpose of RULWA was to encourage the opening up of large, private land holdings for outdoor recreational use by the general public,” with applicability broadly limited to “largely unimproved land.”[14] In rejecting RULWA’s  application to an indoor swimming pool, the Court explained that “[t]he need to limit owner liability derives from the impracticability of keeping large tracts of largely undeveloped land safe for public use. The same need does not arise in the case of indoor recreational facilities which, in contrast, are relatively easy to supervise and monitor for safety hazards.”[15] The court clarified that the Act may still protect owners of land containing improvements, so long as the improvements are “ancillary,” though it stopped short of clearly defining the term.

Following Rivera, but before the Supreme Court again interpreted the Act, lower courts twice held that RULWA protected the owners of large open properties, even where the injuries were associated with built improvements. In 1986, the Commonwealth Court ruled that a baseball field and all of its appurtenant improvements are within RULWA’s meaning of “land,”[16] and in 1990, the Superior Court sustained a RULWA defense when a plaintiff was injured on playground equipment that was installed on a 125-acre property that contained an assortment of other developed features and buildings.[17]

Then, also in 1990, the Supreme Court added a new layer of analysis that focuses on improvements to the land. In Walsh v. City of Philadelphia, a case involving a fully paved outdoor urban playground, the Supreme Court examined whether RULWA applies where an injury resulted from an improved feature of the subject property. The Commonwealth Court had previously held that an outdoor playground was clearly distinguishable from the facts of Rivera (an indoor swimming pool), and must be included within the plain meaning of RULWA’s definition of “land.”[18] In overturning the Commonwealth Court on this point, the Supreme Court constructed a new layer of analysis, focused on the extent and nature of improvements to property.  It explained that RULWA “was not intended to insulate owners of fully developed recreational facilities from the normal duty of maintaining their property in a manner consistent with the property’s designated and intended use by the public.”[19] “[W]hen a recreational facility has been designed with improvements that require regular maintenance to be safely used and enjoyed, the owner of the facility has a duty to maintain the improvements." RULWA was held inapplicable—not principally because the land was urban and small—but because it was fully developed with improvements requiring maintenance.[20]

Over the following decades, courts struggled to consistently follow the framework that emerged from Rivera and Walsh, evaluating many claims with a multitude of factual nuances.

Pre-2018 Case Summaries

The following summaries are offered to illustrate how courts have wrestled with this analysis in a range of scenarios. While many of these cases remain legally precedential, they were each published prior to the effective date of the 2018 RULWA amendment (discussed in the following section) which clarified a more expansive definition of “land.” 

RULWA Protection Applied

Courts have been relatively consistent in sustaining RULWA protection where (1) the land at issue is relatively large and largely undeveloped (as articulated in Rivera), and (2) improvements related to the injury are not the kind of maintenance-requiring recreational improvements described in Walsh.

• Brezinski, Commonwealth Court, 1997. The plaintiff was injured on a human-made earthen embankment between a picnic area and parking lot. The court held that the “one-time” modification of the landscape did not result in the type of maintenance-requiring improvement excluded from RULWA under Walsh, and held that other improvements (parking area and pavilion, were ancillary improvements and thus within RULWA’s definition of “land.”[21]
• Stone v. York Haven Power Co., Supreme Court, 2000. A boat accident occurred on a lake which was formed by a human-made dam. The Superior Court had previously ruled that the lake itself was an “improvement to [the river’s] natural state,” which it compared to the improved facilities in Walsh, rendering RULWA inapplicable. Overturning that holding, the Supreme Court held that the lake, though human-made, was plainly the type of area RULWA was designed for (an open body of water), notwithstanding that it only existed because of human intervention. It clarified that an injury resulting from the dam itself would not fall under RULWA.[22]
• Davis, Commonwealth Court, 2010. Plaintiff was injured when he stepped in a divot while playing football on an open area (not an athletic field, as such) within Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park system. The court affirmed the city’s RULWA defense, holding that although the broader park system contained many improvements, and the subject area had been cleared and was routinely mowed, the area where the incident occurred was not improved with features requiring “unusual ongoing maintenance.”

Similarly, courts sustained RULWA defenses where an injury resulted from an improvement that was deemed truly ancillary to open space land, as distinguished from the type of recreational improvements requiring maintenance described in Walsh.

• Yanno, Superior Court, 1999. The plaintiff was injured when falling from a train trestle. The court relied on the largeness, remoteness, openness, and recreational use of the parcel to sustain a RULWA defense, notwithstanding that the site of the injury was a towering, human-made improvement that was known to the landowning railway company. “[T]he structure should be viewed in light of the other factors,” principally the use, size, location, and openness of the broader parcel.[23]
• Pagnotti, Commonwealth Court, 2000. The plaintiff drowned while playing on a low-head dam in a stream within a relatively small suburban public park. While the dam was a human-made improvement, the court was persuaded by the open, relatively undeveloped nature of the broader park, and also considered evidence that the landowning township was unaware that the dam was within its boundaries.[24]
• Stone v. Lackawanna Energy Ltd., Superior Court, 2003.[25]  The plaintiff was injured when he crashed his motorbike into a swing-arm gate used by the easement-holding power company to prevent illegal dumping. The court observed that the property as a whole was “the kind of rough, undeveloped terrain whereon recreational users would not reasonably expect any particular protection or safety measures” and that recreational users would not reasonably respect otherwise with respect the subject gate. The gate was therefore an ancillary improvement designed to prevent illegal dumping, not the sort of improvement requiring ongoing maintenance that obviates RULWA under Walsh.[26]

In one case, the Superior Court sustained RULWA protection—despite the developed character of the broader property—where an injury involved a relatively natural area and cause of injury.

• Redinger, Superior Court, 1992. Plaintiff was injured by a falling tree limb while watching a baseball game at a YMCA ballfield. The court sidestepped analysis as to whether the ballfield itself would be an improvement outside of RULWA under Walsh, because the precise location of the injury (outside the playing field) and cause of the injury (falling limb) supported RULWA immunity.[27] While not directly overruled, this case is in tension with the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling in Mills, discussed below.
• Kelley v. United States, U.S. District Court, 2012. In a rare federal court decision interpreting RULWA, the Eastern District reviewed state court decisions and synthesized their holdings into concise principles. The plaintiff slipped and fell on a vinyl walkway that facilitated access to a national historic site. The court first held that a RULWA land analysis has two parts: consider first whether the broader property is within Rivera’s conceptualization (large and containing primarily “improvements . . . clearly designed to promote [recreational] purposes”) and then focus on the particular location of the injury and any improvements involved. Finding the first factor satisfied (broad, open, expansive park property), the court ruled that the vinyl walkway was an ancillary structure and therefore within RULWA’s definition of “land.” In supporting this conclusion, the court put forward a definition of “ancillary,” a term first used in Rivera to describe the types of improvements that will not obviate RULWA. The court held that an improvement is covered only if it offers no “recreational activity independent of those already available on the land.”^[28]

RULWA Rejected

Appellate courts have repeatedly rejected RULWA defenses because either: (1) the property at issue is too developed or otherwise not within the type of land described in Rivera, (2) the injury involved a maintenance-requiring recreational improvement under the reasoning of Walsh, or (3) both.

Disqualified Because of Specific Improvement

• Duda, Commonwealth Court, 1991. The plaintiff was injured diving into an outdoor swimming pool. The court compared the pool to the type of fully developed recreational facility at issue in Walsh.[29]
• Seiferth, Commonwealth Court, 1992. The plaintiff was injured on a lacrosse field. Though the field was open and covered in grass, the court followed the Walsh court to reason that it was a human-engineered recreational facility requiring ongoing maintenance to be safely used for its intended purpose.[30]
• Bashioum, Commonwealth Court, 2000. The plaintiff’s injury occurred at the base of a “giant slide” maintained by a county government as an attraction on an otherwise undeveloped 400-acre tract. The broader property was plainly the type described in Rivera, but RULWA did not apply to the incident because the slide itself was held to be the sort of improvement requiring maintenance.[31]
• James, Commonwealth Court, 2018. A county operated a 1500-acre park that was broadly undeveloped. Plaintiff was injured when she rode her bicycle into a wire gate that had been installed specifically to prevent motorized vehicles from entering a roadway that had been restricted to recreational users. The court considered evidence that the gate was installed, opened, closed, and maintained by the landowner, in service of the area’s primary recreational purpose, concluding that it was an improvement outside of RULWA protection.[32]

Disqualified Because of Property at Large

• DiMino, Commonwealth Court, 1991. The plaintiff was injured when he rode his bicycle into a drainage area of a small suburban playground. Unlike the fully paved playground at issue in Walsh, this playground included a combination of developed recreational features and natural areas. The decision, issued one year after Walsh, rejected RULWA by drawing a direct parallel between the present playground and the Walsh playground. The decision did not hinge on the dispositive reasoning of Walsh (whether the injury resulted from specific improvements requiring maintenance for safe use) but read Walsh to broadly prohibit RULWA’s application to any property that can be characterized as a “developed recreational facilit[ies] with improvements.”[33]
• Mills, Supreme Court, 1993. Two injuries occurred at Penn’s Landing, an overwhelmingly developed waterfront recreation area with vast concrete construction, restaurants, music venues, etc. One injury occurred on an improved area (an uncovered drain), and one occurred on a grassy hillside. The court held that neither injury was subject to RULWA, because while “it could be reasonably argued that the unimproved grassy and wooded areas within Penn's Landing do fall within the ambit of [RULWA], such an overly technical application of [RULWA] would certainly lead to inconsistent results and thwart the intended purpose of the act,” such purpose being to protect “landowners of large unimproved tracts which, without alteration, [are] amenable to the enumerated recreational purposes within the [RULWA].”

Disqualified Due to Specific Improvement and Property at Large

• Brown, Commonwealth Court, 1995. The plaintiff was injured, falling from bleachers installed and maintained as part of a baseball field facility on municipal land. Following Seiferth and Mills, the court rejected RULWA immunity both because of the developed nature of the broader parcel, and because the injury occurred on a recreational improvement, asserting that “the Act was never intended to bar claims arising out of defective improvements.”[34]
• Hatfield, Commonwealth Court, 2010. The plaintiff was injured when she stepped in a divot in the surface of a grass and dirt area between two softball fields. The court looked at the overall developed nature of the property, but also noted that the specific area, while only dirt and grass, was key egress supporting the developed facility, and was routinely maintained by the groundskeeper.[35]

As the diversity of judicial opinions demonstrates, courts before 2018 found it exceedingly difficult to draw clear lines. RULWA applied to the gate in Stone, but not the gate in Jones. It protected the owner of a small, developed suburban park in Pagnotti, but not in Dimino. Several courts attempted to fashion multi-factor tests of questionable usefulness.[36] An unsatisfying judicial refrain emerged: that RULWA applicability must be determined on a case-by-case basis.[37]

2018 RULWA Amendment Broadens Protection

In 2018, the General Assembly amended RULWA and expanded the original 18-word definition of “land” to 69 words:

"Land" means land, roads, water, watercourses, private ways and buildings, amenities, structures, boating access and launch ramps, bridges, fishing piers, boat docks, ramps, paths, paved or unpaved trails, hunting blinds and machinery or equipment when attached to the realty. The term shall also include areas providing access to, or parking for, lands and waters, including, but not limited to, access ramps, trails or piers for use by recreational users with disabilities. 68 P.S. §477(2)(1) [Bolded text indicates language added in 2018.]

With this, the General Assembly provided clear instruction that RULWA is, in fact, intended to protect landowners from liability directly associated with a wide range of human-made improvements, including ones that are directly related to recreational activities, and which require regular maintenance for safe use. The expanded definition retains the original mention of buildings, structures, machinery, and equipment, but adds new general categories (“amenities”), as well as many specific improvement types (boating access and launch ramps, bridges, fishing piers, boat docks, ramps, paths, paved or unpaved trails, and hunting blinds). The construction of the revised list indicates protection for human-made improvements that may have been disqualified under previous holdings. For example, docks, ramps, fishing piers, and hunting blinds might all be reasonably characterized as “recreational improvements requiring maintenance for safe use” under the formulation in Walsh. It also suggests that the general items (buildings, structures, machinery, equipment, and amenities) should be understood in light of the more specific items that follow, which are diverse in type, purpose, and scale.

While it remains to be seen how far courts will go in applying the expanded definition to improvements not specifically listed, several more recent decisions illustrate judicial analysis of post-2018 RULWA. Each case shows a favorable outcome for defendant landowners, with courts dismissing both novel and tired challenges to RULWA defenses.

• Wright v. Township of Bristol, 263 A.3d 52 (Commw. Ct. 2021) (unreported decision). The court cited the 2018-expanded list of RULWA-qualified improvements to conclude that a playground sliding board was an “ancillary improvement” covered by RULWA, drawing a direct contrast with the similar pre-2018 case, Bashioum (involving an injury at the base of a slide). The court approvingly echoed the trial court’s opinion which pushed back on exclusion of improved features from RULWA: “If the test for whether [RULWA] applies is whether there is a structure that “requires maintenance to be safely used and enjoyed,” then the statute’s explicit inclusion of “structures and “buildings” in the definition of “land would be meaningless. Every building or structure requires maintenance to be safely used and enjoyed.” [emphasis in original][38]
• Clark v. Schuylkill Canal Ass’n, 283 A.3d 388 (Commw. Ct. 2022). A visitor to a 60-acre county park was killed by a falling tree. The plaintiffs argued that “substantial” improvements had removed the site from RULWA protection (logs placed for seating, rock firepits, trash cans, and a pathway). The court concluded that the passive, relatively natural area was clearly within the protection of RULWA, notwithstanding the various improvements present on the property. The case did not turn on the 2018-expanded definition of land but illustrates judicial resistance to efforts to overextend the “too many improvements” holdings of Mills.
• Doyle v. Muniz-Nieves, 343 A.3d 361 (Commw. Ct. 2025). A horseback rider was riding on a trail within a 315-acre State Park. The horse was attacked by a loose dog. When the dog’s owner intervened, the horse kicked her. Rejecting the plaintiff’s claim that the trail system installed by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources rendered the property too developed to be covered by RULWA, the court pointed to the 2018-expanded definition of land and held that the legislature unequivocally intended for trails like the one at issue to receive protection.
• D.B. v. Grossi, U.S. District Court, 2025. The plaintiff was injured attempting to jump a gap between a floating dock and the shoreline of a lake formed by a hydroelectric dam. He argued that the highly developed nature of the residential and commercial property surrounding the lake removed the lake from RULWA protection, and that the dock itself was an improvement outside of the Act. The court cited the 2018-expanded RULWA “land” definition for its explicit inclusion of “boat docks,” as well as its prior Kelly decision about “ancillary structures.” It defined the latter as one that facilitates recreational use of the covered land to which it is attached and offers no independent recreational use.[39]

Themes and Through-lines

The complex and varied caselaw interpreting RULWA offers useful precedent to litigants on both sides of future RULWA disputes, but several core themes and principles can be observed and applied by landowners as they appraise legal risk.

• Consider the subject property as a whole. Even where an injury results from a relatively natural condition, RULWA will not apply if the broader property is excluded from the Act’s protection. RULWA offers the strongest protection for large, open, mostly undeveloped land, but may protect more modest and relatively improved properties as well. There is no clearly defined line for when property is too small or too developed. Further, the type of improvements matters more than their number. That is, improvements which transform the character of the property from its undeveloped state make RULWA potentially less applicable (consider the concrete landscape in Mills), while widespread improvements may have no limiting effect if they are in harmony with the relatively open and undeveloped character of the land (consider the scattered improvements in Clark, Davis, Doyle, Brezinski)—or are otherwise of the kind listed within the Act (Doyle, Wright, Kelley, Grossi).
• Consider individual improvements within the property. RULWA protection remains doubtful where an injury occurs in connection with a highly developed improvement which is (1) dissimilar in kind to those listed in the Act, and (2) not purely ancillary to the property itself. Improvements to the land that are engineered to facilitate a particular recreational activity, independent of the land’s natural values, such as playing fields, swimming pools, skate parks, and skating rinks, are potentially more vulnerable. The presence of these types of facilities will not necessarily obviate RULWA protection as to other areas of a more expansive property, but their presence counsels enhanced caution and affirmative risk management on the part of landowners, particularly with respect to their locations and areas supporting their function.

Can Owners Charge Fees?

RULWA protection generally isn’t available if owners charge for admission. The 2018 amendment clarifies several payment scenarios that are not considered prohibited “charges.” The following are allowed without negating RULWA protection:

• Voluntary contributions by recreational users
• In-kind contributions (e.g., receiving the meat of deer hunted on the property)
• Contributions made to an owner that are not retained by the owner and are used by the owner exclusively for: conserving or maintaining the land, paying taxes on the land, or paying for liability insurance on the land.

Court decisions provide further guidance on the boundaries of when various types of fees may or may not obviate RULWA protection.

• Payment of permit fees does not necessarily obviate RULWA. In Brezinski, the plaintiff argued that RULWA could not apply because the injured person was attending a gathering at a picnic facility for which a permit fee had been paid by the event organizer. The court held that permit fees of this sort are not within the meaning of RULWA’s definition of “charge,” which is described as “the admission price or fee asked in return for invitation or permission to enter or go upon the land.”
• Entry fees for limited areas of property may not obviate RULWA as to other areas. In Zackhery, portions of the property required a fee for entry, but because no fee was required for access to the area of the property where the injury occurred, RULWA was available.
• A fee to participate in a particular activity on the land is not equivalent to a charge for entry. In Kniaz v. Benton Borough, 535 A.2d 308 (Commw. Ct. 1994), the plaintiff was injured when a picnic table tipped over in a public park while she was attending a fundraiser bingo game for a volunteer fire company. She sought to obviate RULWA by arguing that she had paid a fee to participate in the bingo game. The court sustained RULWA’s applicability by distinguishing this bingo fee from a fee charged for access to the land itself. Similarly, the Kelley court rejected an argument that RULWA was inapplicable because the park at issue sometimes charges fees for additional activities, because the land remained generally open to the public without charge for “general admission.” Notably, these cases involved public parks; it should not be presumed that this distinction will be relevant in every case. For example, where visitors would not be welcome upon the land but for their participation in the activity for which they paid a fee, RULWA is more likely obviated.

How Public Does the Access Have to Be?

Section 1 of RULWA explains that the Act’s purpose is to make land available to the “public.” However, the operative Section 3 of the Act provides that an owner of land owes no duty of care to keep the premises safe for entry or use by “recreational users,” which are persons defined as “a person who enter or use the land for a recreational purpose.” No provision of the Act limits the application of Section 3 to properties that are affirmatively held open to the general public. In fact, courts have sustained RULWA protection for properties that explicitly prohibited entry.[40] There are no cases involving challenges to RULWA based on the limitation of access to select individuals.  

Failure to Guard or Warn

Although RULWA immunizes landowners from negligence claims, landowners remain liable for “willful or malicious failure to guard or warn” recreational users of a dangerous condition. To find a willful failure to warn, courts first require evidence that the owner had actual knowledge of the dangerous condition, and that the danger would not be obvious to entrants.[41] Actual knowledge, as opposed to imputed knowledge, requires specific evidence that the landowner was aware of the dangerous condition, not merely that they should have known, or might be expected to have known.[42] Even then, a landowner is protected unless the danger is of a nature that is not obvious to recreational users.

Additionally, the plaintiff must further establish that the defendant “maliciously or willfully chose to ignore it or knowingly failed to guard against any dangers.”[43] No recorded cases illustrate exactly what evidence a court would deem sufficient.  In other legal contexts, the “willfulness” of a failure to act can sometimes be inferred from an ongoing failure to take action after learning of relevant facts.[44] For example, a landowner’s RULWA protection might be compromised if they are aware that their property contains a popular swimming hole, and that multiple swimmers have been injured on submerged rocks that are difficult to see from the surface, and continually take no action to discourage or prevent access, or otherwise warn of the danger.[45] 

While landowners have no duty to actively search for nonobvious hazards, they are well advised to take prompt action to correct any that are discovered, particularly following the occurrence of injuries. Evidence that a landowner acted in good faith to prevent or address risks is effective to dispel any suggestion of willful or malicious failure.[46]

Governmental Immunity

Pennsylvania's governmental immunity statutes, the Tort Claims Act and Sovereign Immunity Acts, shield municipalities and Commonwealth agencies from claims of willful misconduct. Liability may be imposed upon these entities only for their negligent acts. But, as noted above, where an injury occurs on “land” within the meaning of RULWA, the Act shields landowners from negligence suits. Consequently, courts have repeatedly affirmed that public agencies are granted total immunity for certain recreational injuries. In Lory, for example, a boy drowned jumping off a rock ledge into a creek containing submerged rocks. The city was found immune under RULWA on a claim of negligent maintenance of recreational lands and also was found immune under the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act for willful failure to warn of hazards on the property, leading to dismissal of the suit. Public landowners are still exposed to liability where: (1) RULWA does not apply, and (2) where the allegation involves negligence within one of the exceptions in the governmental immunity statutes.