Opinion ID: 1305984
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The purported distinction between extrahazardous railroad crossing and unsafe stairway or ramp in building.

Text: The majority seeks to escape that conclusion by making a distinction, without support by any cited legal authority, between the opinion of an expert witness that a stairway or ramp in a building is unsafe (held by this court to be admissible in Naney v. Lane, 247 Or. 367, 371, 428 P.2d 722 (1967), and Ritter v. Beals et al., 225 Or. 504, 525, 358 P.2d 1080 (1961)), and the opinion of an expert witness that a railroad crossing is extrahazardous, which the majority would hold to be inadmissible. The majority would support such a distinction by using the term extrahazardous in the context of its legal definition and from the standpoint of the user, i.e., that an extrahazardous railroad crossing is one which a reasonably prudent automobile driver cannot use safely, rather than in the context of what is considered to be acceptable conduct by [the railroad] industry. At the same time, the majority would use the term unsafe, as applied to the stairway or ramp in a building, not in terms of the legal definition of unsafe, much less from the standpoint of the user, but in the context of what is considered acceptable conduct by [the] industry which designs and constructs stairways and ramps in buildings. After thus using the terms unsafe and extrahazardous in two different contexts, the majority would say that a skilled and experienced railroad safety engineer who expresses the opinion that a railroad crossing is extrahazardous is making a moral community judgment about the ability of a reasonably prudent automobile driver, whereas a skilled and experienced building architect who expresses the opinion that the stairway or ramp is unsafe is not making a moral judgment, but is expressing no more than a professional appraisal of what is considered acceptable by an industry. In my view, to make such a purported distinction, and on such a basis, is to engage in legal legerdemain in an attempt to distinguish two concepts which, when viewed in terms of reality, have no substantial difference, at least for the purposes of determining whether the opinion of an expert witness can be of appreciable help to the jury, so as to require its admission. It is true, of course, that because this court has previously defined the term extrahazardous railroad crossing in terms of whether a reasonably prudent automobile driver could use it safely, the result has been that in designing and constructing a railroad crossing a railroad company could satisfy the duty imposed by that definition by considering the question of its safety solely from the standpoint of the user  and a reasonably prudent user. By contrast, the duty imposed by law upon one who designs and constructs a stairway or ramp in a building (and the duty now imposed by this court upon railroads in the planning and construction of railroad crossings) is the duty to use reasonable care under all of the circumstances, without limitation to the anticipation of conduct by users, much less the conduct only of reasonably prudent users. See Prosser, Law of Torts (4th ed) 170-76, § 33. It does not follow, however, that an expert cannot properly express the opinion that a railroad crossing is extrahazardous, but can properly express the opinion that a stairway or ramp in a building is unsafe. Indeed, the term safe is usually defined to mean reasonably safe. 38 Words and Phrases (perm ed) 7 ff. For that reason and because, as previously stated, the duty imposed upon one who designs or builds a stairway or ramp in a building is a duty to use reasonable care under all of the circumstances, the opinion of an expert that such a stairway or ramp is unsafe is as much, if not more, the expression of a moral community judgment relating to what the majority refer to as that legal abstraction  the reasonably prudent man. In such a case, however, that abstraction is used with reference to the man who designs or constructs such a stairway or ramp, rather than the man who uses the stairway or ramp. In my opinion, however, the controlling question in deciding the admissibility of the expert opinion testimony in this case is not whether the legal abstraction of the reasonably prudent man is necessarily involved in both of these two situations. Instead, the controlling question is whether, assuming that it is necessary to consider such a legal abstraction in a case involving design and construction of a railroad crossing, any such abstraction is of such a nature that the opinion of an expert could not be of any appreciable help to a jury in such a case because the duty of the railroad under the now-abandoned definition of extrahazardous was limited under that definition to a consideration of whether a reasonably prudent automobile driver could safely use the crossing. The majority says that the question asked of this expert witness in this case was similar to asking a traffic engineer whether 30 miles per hour in a time and place and under certain conditions was a speed which a reasonably prudent person would drive. The majority also says that because everyone drives an automobile, the question whether a railroad crossing can be used safely by a reasonably prudent driver is not the subject of expertise not known to the average juror, so as to be a subject on which the expertise of the witness gives him a special insight superior to that of the average juror. It is my opinion, however, that even in this age of the automobile, everyone has not only had the experience of driving an automobile, but also, and at least occasionally, has had the experience of walking, including the experience of walking on stairways and ramps in buildings. As a result, the average juror is just as likely to know whether a stairway or ramp in a building is safe or unsafe for use by those who enter the building as he is to know whether a railroad crossing can be used safely by reasonably prudent drivers. The very purpose of the various standards developed by architects in the design of stairways and ramps in buildings is to provide facilities that can be used safely by persons who enter such buildings. Thus, in Naney v. Lane, supra , a stairway had been constructed with a metal strip along the edge of the steps with an edge about 1/8 or 3/16 of an inch higher than the rubber matting on the steps. An architect was permitted to express the opinion that this was not a safe design because a person might catch his shoe on that protruding edge. That testimony by an expert witness with superior knowledge was held to be of such possible help to the jury as to be properly admissible. To the same effect, in Ritter v. Beals et al., supra , the question whether a ramp constructed in a building for wheelchairs was too steep to be safe for use by persons in wheelchairs was held to be a proper subject for expert opinion testimony that the ramp was unsafe. Likewise, in this case, when plaintiff's expert witnesses expressed the opinion that this railroad crossing was extrahazardous, they were necessarily stating the opinion that the crossing was unsafe for use by reasonably prudent persons. But because they were required to assume the use of the crossing by reasonably prudent persons was no more of a reason to conclude that such testimony by an expert with superior knowledge would not be of appreciable help to a jury, so as to exclude such opinion testimony, than it would have been a valid reason to exclude the opinion testimony in Naney and Ritter. The reason why the testimony of a person with special training can be of appreciable help to the jury in both cases is illustrated by the opinion of the court in Morgan v. Washington Trust Co., 105 R.I. 13, 249 A.2d 48, 51 (1969), in which the doors at the entrance of a bank were designed to swing outward and over a vestibule or platform and plaintiff, on entering the bank, fell when she pulled on one of these doors. In holding that the testimony of an architect was admissible in that case the court said (at p. 51): From the pictures which are in evidence, the entranceway to defendant's bank appears to the untutored eye to be perfectly safe. It is only when a trained individual such as plaintiff's architect compares the outward swing of the new doors with the depth of the platform, and when he explains the difficulty encountered by a person of short stature in reaching up and pulling open the door that the hazards that may surround entry into the bank become apparent.   . Similarly, the admission of expert opinion testimony in Naney v. Lane, supra , that the raised metal strip on the edge of the steps of a stairway was not a safe design, together with an explanation of the reasons why it was an unsafe design, was consistent with the holdings of the court in Morgan and in numerous similar cases. Because the untutored eye of the average juror might not have fully understood why persons could not safely use the entranceway to the bank in Morgan, the stairway in Naney, or the ramp in Ritter, the opinions of qualified expert witnesses were held to be admissible in those cases because such opinion testimony was considered by the courts to be appreciable help to the average jurors in those cases. In Yundt v. D & D Bowl, Inc., 259 Or. 247, 486 P.2d 553 (1971), this court quoted with approval from 7 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed) 21, § 1923 as follows: `But the only true criterion is: On this subject can a jury from this person receive appreciable help? In other words, the test is a relative one, depending on the particular subject and the particular witness with reference to that subject   .' (259 Or. at 258, 486 P.2d at 559) The court in Yundt then held that: There are situations, such as Sandow, where a jury clearly is not equally well qualified and needs help to find the truth. There are also situations where a jury clearly is equally qualified without help from opinion testimony such as offered here. It is the area between the clearly qualified and the clearly unqualified where the trial judge should be granted a certain latitude of decision in excluding or receiving expert opinion testimony. (259 Or. at 260, 486 P.2d at 565). This case was tried before an able and experienced trial judge. The majority has expressly conceded that [t]here is no doubt that the experts who testified in the present case had superior knowledge and training concerning railroad crossings and those circumstances which make them dangerous. The trial judge held, in effect, that under all of the circumstances of this case, including, among other things, the controversy between the parties relating to the extent to which the view of a motorist approaching the crossing was obstructed, the testimony of these well-qualified experts can be of appreciable help to the jury in deciding whether this railroad crossing was one which could be used safely by reasonably prudent automobile drivers. In both Naney v. Lane, supra , and Ritter v. Beals et al., supra , we affirmed trial judges in their exercise of discretion under similar circumstances. In my opinion, this cannot properly be said to be a case in which a jury clearly is equally well qualified without help from expert testimony such as offered here. Instead, this is a case in which it should at least be held that the question whether the testimony of plaintiff's expert witnesses can be of appreciable help to the jury was in the area between the clearly qualified and the clearly unqualified, with the result that the exercise of discretion by the trial judge upon that question in this case should be also affirmed.