The Kansas Court of Appeals on Friday agreed with a local judge who ruled that a local bank wasn’t liable for injuries an 81-year-old man suffered in a mysterious fall on the bank’s property a month before his death.

The court upheld District Court Judge Robert Fairchild’s ruling in a dispute between the Lawrence Bank and the estate of Oscar Beck, who was found Dec. 4, 2003, lying in the drive-through area of the bank at 3500 Clinton Parkway.

The key question in the case was what Beck was doing walking near the bank- something that’s still unknown.

Beck lived about a half-mile away. It appeared from a surveillance video that he may have fallen from a three-foot retaining wall that separated the bank’s drive-through from a grassy area next to Clinton Parkway.

Beck had no accounts there, but his daughter speculated he may have been cutting across the lot to buy cigarettes at the nearby Hy-Vee.

After the fall, he was admitted to University of Kansas Hospital for head and hip injuries, and eventually was transferred to a nursing home, where he died of acute pneumonia. Head and hip injuries were considered a contributing factor.

His daughter testified that although Beck could communicate with her, he was in pain and she didn’t want to press him for information about the fall.

After his death, Beck’s estate sued the bank, alleging negligence, but the bank argued that Beck was a trespasser and that it didn’t owe him “reasonable care.”

Beck’s estate argued that it was a “local custom” for people to regularly cut across the grassy lot, which amounted to the bank extending the privilege of crossing to the general public. That, the family argued, would have made Beck a “public invitee” or “licensee” to whom the bank owed some responsibility.

But Fairchild found there wasn’t enough evidence to support a jury finding that cutting through the lawn was a “local custom,” and he decided the case in the bank’s favor. The appeals court agreed, in part because Beck’s estate was never able to present evidence showing his purpose for going onto the land.

“The evidence … only created a mere conjecture or possibility that Beck was using the bank’s property as a shortcut or that Beck was there to conduct business with the bank,” the appeals court decision stated.