Case Name: WALT DISNEY WORLD CO. and Insurance Company of North America, Appellants, v. Jacqueline MERRITT and Bill Merritt, her husband, Appellees
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1981-08-26
Citations: 404 So. 2d 1077
Docket Number: No. 80-1064
Parties: WALT DISNEY WORLD CO. and Insurance Company of North America, Appellants, v. Jacqueline MERRITT and Bill Merritt, her husband, Appellees.
Judges: ORFINGER, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 404
Pages: 1077–1082

Head Matter:
WALT DISNEY WORLD CO. and Insurance Company of North America, Appellants, v. Jacqueline MERRITT and Bill Merritt, her husband, Appellees.
No. 80-1064.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
Aug. 26, 1981.
Rehearing Denied Sept. 29, 1981.
John L. O’Donnell, Jr., and John W. Ward, of DeWolf, Ward, Morris, Wohlust, Jontz & O’Donnell, P. A., Orlando, for appellants.
James O. Cunningham, of Billings, Durie & Morgan, Orlando, for appellees.

Opinion:
DAUKSCH, Chief Judge.
This is an appeal from a plaintiff's judgment in a personal injury action.
Although we agree with the appellant that there was little evidence to support the giving of the instruction to the jury regarding the State Fire Marshal's Rules and Regulations, we do find enough such evidence to determine it was not reversible error to give the charge. The charge reads as follows:
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the following is a portion of the Rules and Regulations of the Florida Administrative Code as adopted by the State Fire Marshal and filed in the Office of the Secretary of State of the State of Florida which provides, among other things, as follows:
A place of assembly shall mean a room or space used for assembly or educational occupancy for 100 or more occupants or which has a floor area of 1500 square feet or more used for such purposes. Such room or space shall include any similar occupied connecting room or space in the same story, or in a story or stories above or below where entrance is common to the rooms or spaces.
In a place of assembly: In each room where chairs, or tables and chairs, are used, the arrangement shall be such as will provide for ready access by aisles to each exist doorway. Aisles leading directly to exit doorways shall have not less than 36 inches clear width which shall not be obstructed by chairs, tables or other objects.
Violation of this cited rule and cited regulation is evidence of negligence. It is not, however, conclusive evidence of negligence. If you find that a person alleged to have been negligent violated such a regulation, you may consider that fact, together with other facts and circumstances, in determining whether such person was negligent.
A jury could have found that the premises were not in a reasonably safe condition and that the aisles were blocked. The testimony of both the injured plaintiff and her husband was to the effect that the chairs in the restaurant were in such a jumbled disarray that there was no way she and her family could leave the area where they had been seated without pushing the chairs out of the way or climbing over them. Since she was leading the way she elected to clear a pathway by moving chairs out of her way. While so doing her legs became tangled in the chair she was moving at the moment and she fell. This is not a situation where one isolated chair is left in an aisle, but where a mass of chairs are pushed away from tables in a haphazard way and are completely blocking the egress of customers at other tables. The jury had a right to conclude that the premises were not maintained in a reasonably safe condition because a restaurant patron should have a right to leave the premises without running an obstacle course. What degree of negligence can be attributed to the property owner and to the patron, respectively, is also a jury question, and no issue of apportionment of negligence is raised here.
We find the exclusion of the tendered photographic evidence to not be harmful error since the photograph did not depict the area when the injury occurred.
We agree appellant that plaintiffs' attorney's remarks regarding his wife being an employee of Walt Disney World were wrong as were his remarks about the doctor and the insurance company. The trial judge adequately instructed the jury about these improprieties, thus no reversible error has been shown. As has been often said, it is up to the trier of the fact to determine the weight of the evidence; we only determine the legal sufficiency. It was legally sufficient so we cannot reverse the judgment as appellants would have us do.
AFFIRMED.
ORFINGER, J., concurs.
COBB, J., dissents with opinion.