Indiana Supreme Court Reverses for Crash Victims After Landowner's Bush Hid Stop Sign

On a rural four-way intersection in Miami County, Indiana, Yerano Martinez drove into a collision he says he never saw coming. A large bush on the adjacent private property had grown into the public right-of-way and blocked his view of the stop sign controlling his approach. He and his wife Jessica were injured in the resulting crash.

The Martinezes retained Craig Kelley and Faultless LLC and sued Jeffrey Smith, the landowner responsible for the vegetation, along with county entities. The trial court in Marion Superior Court granted summary judgment to Smith, concluding that Indiana law imposed no duty on landowners when natural growth simply sat on their side of the property line. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed on December 31, 2024 (No. 24A-CT-1272), holding that a visual obstruction entirely on private property did not give rise to liability to passing motorists.

Scott Faultless carried the case to the Indiana Supreme Court, arguing that the analysis turned on the wrong question. The critical fact, he told the justices at oral argument in June 2025, was not where the roots were planted but where the obstruction reached: the bush had grown into the public right-of-way, blocking a government traffic-control device and 'completely disregarding the safety interests of motorists.' That distinction, he argued, placed the situation squarely within established common-law duty principles.

On April 8, 2026, the Indiana Supreme Court agreed (No. 26S-CT-112). The court reversed the summary judgment entered against the Martinezes and returned the case for further proceedings, recognizing that a landowner whose vegetation extends into a public right-of-way and obstructs a traffic sign may owe a duty to drivers on that road. The ruling resolved a question that both the trial court and the Court of Appeals had answered in the defendant's favor at every prior stage.

Scott Faultless, Sidney Lewellen, and William Beck of Craig Kelley and Faultless LLC represented Yerano and Jessica Martinez throughout the litigation.