Court Opinion

ID: 9446148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:47:33.981507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:32.704913
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge
(concurring specially).
When the opinion in this case was handed down, I was content, without stating my reasons, to note my concurrence in the result, that is in the judgment reversing the case for trial anew. Upon further consideration, I think I should now make clear my reasons for so concurring by stating distinctly the part of the opinion I did and do not concur in as well as the part in which I did and do concur, and why I think the judgment should be reversed.
The part of the opinion I did not concur in is the apparent holding that it was negligence in the store owner to build a balcony as this one was built with a railing made open so that shoppers could see the store below and so as to make it a pleasant place for shoppers to come for purchases. I think the law did not and does not require a store-keeper to wall all balconies in to keep some possible child from climbing on a railing any more than to wall off his escalators, his stairways, his chairs and his tables, and if it were not for the Finley testimony, I would say no case for a jury was made out. I do not think the law goes anywhere near as far as I think the majority opinion does in giving directions to storekeepers that they must make their stores safe for two year old children when the supposed lack of safety consists not in defective construction or negligent maintenance but in a construction which is neither out of the ordinary nor in any way defective. I think we had just as well say that, because a small child if allowed to get away from his mother will get hurt by a fall down an escalator or out a window or off a table or chair, a store owner can’t have any of those things without a guard standing by.
*686The part of the opinion I concur in is the part dealing with Mrs. Finley’s testimony set out in the majority opinion. I am convinced that it was for the jury to say whether, when she discovered the peril to that particular child resulting from its intransigent persistence in respect of the balcony, she exercised due care under the circumstances testified to by her in not taking the child to its mother if she could be found or to some place of safety. For this reason and only for this reason, I concur in the view that the case ought not to have been taken from the jury and that it should be remanded for a new trial on this issue.