Case Name: Beulah Pitre RICHARD et vir, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. GENERAL FIRE AND CASUALTY COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1963-07-15
Citations: 155 So. 2d 676
Docket Number: No. 896
Parties: Beulah Pitre RICHARD et vir, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. GENERAL FIRE AND CASUALTY COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant.
Judges: Before TATE, SAVOY, and CULPEP-PER, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 155
Pages: 676–681

Head Matter:
Beulah Pitre RICHARD et vir, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. GENERAL FIRE AND CASUALTY COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 896.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana. Third Circuit.
July 15, 1963
Rehearing Denied Aug. 28, 1963.
Lewis & Lewis, by Seth Lewis, Jr., Opelousas, for defendant-appellant.
Frugé & Foret, by J. Burton Foret, Ville Platte, for plaintiff-appellee.
Before TATE, SAVOY, and CULPEP-PER, JJ.

Opinion:
TATE, Judge.
Mrs. Pitre, the plaintiff, slipped and fell as she was leaving the premises of a municipal swimming pool. By this suit, she and her husband seek recovery for her personal injuries and for the medical expenses occasioned by her fall. The defendant is the municipality's liability insurer.
The defendant appeals from judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. The chief issue raised by the appeal is the contention that the wife's contributory negligence bars recovery.
The evidence shows that the plaintiff slipped on the porch of the bathhouse as she was leaving the swimming pool premises. It is virtually uncontradicted that this porch had a slick and smooth surface, that it was quite often wet because of patrons leaving the pool premises in dripping wet bathing suits, and that, when wet, the porch surface became very slippery. A construction expert testified that the porch surface had an exceptionally smooth surface, as a result of which, when wet, it became slippery beyond the ordinary. The testimony of the bathhouse attendants indicates that slips on the smooth surface were not infrequent, although fortunately injuries as a result were rare.
To protect against falls because of a similar condition, rubber mats were laid on the bathhouse lobby floor just off the porch. Similar mats could have been placed on the narrow eight-foot porch at a cost of less than thirty dollars. In fact, the testimony of the pool manager shows that such mats for the porch were recommended for the following season, and that, in order to lessen the danger of falls, the surface o>f the bathhouse porch had been roughened by the application of muriatic acid at the close of the season in which the plaintiff had slipped and fallen.
The plaintiff slipped on the porch just after she went out the door. There was no other path by which she could leave the pool to which she had purchased admission, and the evidence reflects that she was walking normally and using ordinary care when her feet just slipped out from under her, causing her to fall and sustain certain injuries.
Under the evidence, there is little doubt as to the negligence of the defendant's insured in maintaining a hazardous condition of the entranceway which the invitees using the pool were required to use. The entranceway was not maintained in a reasonably safe condition for persons exercising ordinary care and prudence, since patrons walking normally and with care over the wet surface nevertheless sometimes fell.
"The duty of an occupier of premises to an invitee is to exercise reasonable or ordinary care for his safety commensurate with the particular circumstances involved. The occupier thus owes a duty to avoid reasonably foreseeable danger to his invitee Levert v. Travelers Indemnity Co., La.App. 3 Cir., 140 So.2d 811, 812. Further, in the present instance, the occupier through its employees had noticed that the entranceway very often became unusually slippery when wet and caused falls, but it failed to remedy this unreasonably dangerous condition until after the present accident, although the means to do so were inexpensive and easily available.
The defendant-appellant contends that, even so, nevertheless the plaintiff Mrs. Richards' recovery is barred by her contributory negligence in attempting to cross the porch as she left the pool after she had observed that it was wet. Mrs. Richard brought her children to the pool two to three times a week and had observed that the porch was generally wet. She had never seen anyone slip on it prior to her own fall, however.
As stated in the Levert case, cited above, at 140 So.2d 813, " the occupier does not insure an invitee against the possibility of accident. The invitee assumes all normally observable or ordinary risks attendant upon the use of the premises." The invitee's failure to observe or to use due care in avoiding an obvious hazard may constitute contributory negligence barring recovery, Sherrill v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., La.App. 3 Cir., 132 So.2d 72, which decision also quoted the principle set forth at 65 C.J.S. Negligence § 50, p. 545: "However, even though the invitee has knowledge of the danger, or the defect is obvious, the duty of the owner or occupant to use reasonable care to keep the premises reasonably safe for invitees remains, and it runs concurrently with the duty of the invitee to protect himself, so that, where the invitee does not fully appreciate the danger or is without fault, the owner or occupant may be held liable for the injury."
Contributory negligence is conduct which under the circumstances involves an undue risk of harm to the plaintiff, conduct " 'which falls below the standard to which he is required to conform for his own protection' ", Levert v. Travelers Indemnity Co., cited above at 140 So.2d 815. See also Sloan v. Flack, La.App. 3 Cir., 150 So.2d 616. Contributory negligence barring recovery is an affirmative defense which the pleader thereof must prove by a preponderance of the evidence in "slip-fall" accidents as well as in other types of tort cases. Daire v. Southern Farm Bureau Cas. Ins. Co., La.App. 3 Cir., 143 So.2d 389; Bowers v. Lumbermen's Mutual Cas. Co., La.App. 2 Cir., 131 So.2d 70.
Applying these legal principles, we find no error in the trial court's holding that the defendant had not borne its burden of proving contributory negligence on the part of Mrs. Richard.
It is true that Mrs. Richard observed the entranceway was wet when she tried to use it and that on her regular visits to the pool she had observed a similar condition. In determining whether her attempt to walk across the wet surface constituted conduct involving undue risk of injury to her, however, the surrounding circumstances show that her actions did not fall below the standard of care for her own protection required of a reasonably prudent person using ordinary care under the circumstances.
Although Mrs. Richard could observe that the surface was wet, she could not reasonably appreciate that, because of the unusually slick surface of the porchway, the wetness in this instance produced a slipperiness beyond that reasonably to be anticipated, i. e., a hazard greater than was reasonably observable. Levert v. Travelers Indemnity Co., cited above, as well as cases to be cited below. She had not, for instance (as had the bathhouse attendants), ever observed other persons slip on the surface even though walking normally and carefully, as she herself did in the instant case. "[I]n the absence of a warning of danger in the use of the passageway, pedestrians having occasion to traverse it would naturally assume, and had a right to assume, that it was sufficient for the purpose, subject only to such imperfections as might be readily observed by use of ordinary care", Corkern v. Travelers Ins. Co., 229 La. 592, 86 So.2d 205, 207.
In weighing whether the plaintiff used ordinary care by walking onto the wet porchway, it is proper to take into consideration the circumstances that those immediately preceding her, her husband and two children, had crossed the porchway without difficulty (Rodriguez v. City of Sulphur, La.App. 1 Cir., 28 So.2d 771), and that there was no other safer path available for her to take as she left the swimming pool bathhouse (Brantley v. City of Baton Rouge, La.App. 1 Cir., 98 So.2d 824).
We thus find that the plaintiff Mrs. Richard's conduct does not constitute contributory negligence barring her recovery, because by the exercise of ordinary care she could not reasonably have appreciated the hazard maintained by the defendant's insured which caused her to fall (even though she was walking normally and carefully), and thus she could not reasonably have realized that her walking onto the porchway exposed her to undue risk of injury. Thus the present factual situation is distinguished from those in the authorities relied upon by the appellant.
There is no serious dispute as to the amount of the award.
For the reasons stated above, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed at the cost of the defendant-appellant.
Affirmed.