Court Opinion

ID: 9478811
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:58:42.410334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:37.747200
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. In my view the only issue before us is whether the new rule adopted by the Supreme Court of Missouri in Cox v. J.C. Penney Co., 741 S.W.2d 28 (Mo.1987) (en banc), should be applied retroactively. I believe that it should not, as the case was properly submitted to the jury under Missouri law existing at the time of the trial. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the district court.
In diversity cases, the Supreme Court of Missouri is the ultimate source of the law in Missouri. We are compelled to follow and apply its decisions. While we must do so with Cox, the question is whether it should apply retroactively to this case, which was tried and concluded four days before Cox was decided. Missouri courts have not yet determined whether Cox applies retroactively.
In Chevron v. Huson Oil Co., 404 U.S. 97, 92 S.Ct. 349, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971), the Supreme Court held that a decision should not be applied retroactively if it “establishes] a new principle of law” and its retroactive application produces “substantial inequitable results.” Id. at 107, 92 S.Ct. at 355. In Cox, the court announced a new rule for Missouri as to the duty owed invitees, by eliminating the second element of the Missouri Approved Instruction 22.03. MAI 22.03 required the jury to find that “plaintiff did not know and by using ordinary care could not have known of this condition.” Cox, however, conclud-
*1136ed that this element implicated contributory negligence and, therefore, under Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11 (Mo.1983) (en banc), should no longer be considered. Under the principles of Chevron, I am satisfied that since Cox established a new principle of law by completely changing existing Missouri law, it need not be given retroactive effect.
For many years Missouri courts considered the knowledge element, as submitted in the second paragraph of MAI 22.03, as an essential element of a business invitee’s right to recover. See Milliken v. Trianon Hotel Co., 364 S.W.2d 71, 74 (Mo.Ct.App.1962) (“[l]ack of actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition is an essential element of a business invitee’s right to recover”). The Missouri Supreme Court held:
The basis of the defendant-proprietor’s liability is defendant’s superior knowledge of an unreasonable risk of harm of which the invitee does not or in the exercise of ordinary care should not know. Such a defendant is not liable for injuries due to dangers which are obvious, or as well known to plaintiff as to defendant.
Stafford v. Fred Wolferman, Inc., 307 S.W.2d 468, 473 (Mo.1957). The Missouri Supreme Court has also consistently held that the element of plaintiff’s knowledge dealt “more directly with the legal duty or basis of liability of [the] defendant than with a question of contributory negligence.” Smith v. Alaskan Fur Co., 325 S.W.2d 740, 745 (Mo.1959) (court held contributory negligence cases not controlling). Before Cox, Missouri courts did not depart from these long-followed rules. In Hokanson v. Joplin Rendering Co., 509 S.W.2d 107 (Mo.1974), the court concluded:
In view of the parity of knowledge of the general conditions existing at the time and place of this accident, as between invitee and inviter, and of the superior knowledge of the particular circumstances possessed by the invitee, there was no legal duty owing to plaintiff by defendant with respect to potential dangers and the trial court erred in overruling defendant’s motion for a directed verdict.
Id. at 113-14. In Nichols v. Koch, 741 S.W.2d 87 (Mo.Ct.App.1987), which was decided just two days before Cox, the court affirmed a directed verdict against the plaintiff in his suit for injuries sustained on defendant’s premises. When plaintiff raised the comparative fault issue in its reply brief, the court refused to consider the issue as it was first raised on appeal. The court stated, however:
[T]hat the resolution of this issue turns on whether the knowledge of an invitee is considered in determining the duty of the invitor or whether the knowledge is considered only in determining the invitee’s contributory negligence or assumption of risk. If the focus is limited to the invitor’s duty, then the invitor’s duty is discharged by the invitee’s equal knowledge, and the issue of the invitee’s “comparative negligence” is not reached. Since the invitor has not breached his duty, the invitor is not “negligent” or at “fault”, and, without the invitor’s “fault”, there is no “negligence” or “fault” to compare the invitee’s “negligence” or “fault” with.
Id. at 90 (citations omitted). See also Wann v. Lederman, 735 S.W.2d 436 (Mo.Ct.App.1987).
Gustafson v. Benda, on which the Missouri Supreme Court in Cox relied, does nothing more than “supplant the doctrines of contributory negligence ... with a comprehensive system of comparable fault.” 661 S.W.2d at 16. It was not until Cox that the Benda holding, with respect to contributory negligence, was applied to abolish the long-standing element of lack of plaintiff’s knowledge in an invitee’s case against the landowner.1
*1137When this case was tried, the district court properly instructed the jury on the law of Missouri as to the duty owed invitees. This law had not yet been changed and had been recently reaffirmed. In considering the interests of both Bersett and K-Mart as required under Chevron, I conclude that to apply Cox retroactively and require a new trial would burden the litigants with “substantial inequitable results.” I would not reverse the district court for applying the law as it then existed and for its inability to anticipate a substantial and unforeseeable change in the law of Missouri.

. Cox did not exhaustively consider the history of this element, except to cite Harbourn v. Katz Drug Co., 318 S.W.2d 226 (Mo.1958). Harboum regards this element as part of the proprietor’s basic liability as opposed to an element of contributory negligence. The theoretical issue involved has been discussed in some detail in consideration of the similar element contained in Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343A (1965). See Morris v. Compagnie Maritime des Chargeurs Reunis, 832 F.2d 67 (5th Cir.1987); Walker v. Blacksea S.S. Co., 637 F.2d 287 (5th Cir. Unit *1137A 1981). In our earlier decision, Will v. United States, 849 F.2d 315 (8th Cir.1988), the court cites Cox, but found it unnecessary to examine earlier Missouri law.