Court Opinion

ID: 9765116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:51:20.993865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:05.359812
License: Public Domain

Alcorn, J.
(dissenting). I cannot agree with the majority that it was error to withdraw from the jury the question whether the defendant had a duty to “warn the plaintiff of the aforesaid conditions” which, in other allegations of negligence, had been described as “slippery, icy and dangerous”. The finding is that both the plaintiff and the defendant had claimed to have proved that the plaintiff knew of both the ice and the snow on the surface of the driveway. Consequently, I disagree with the statement of the majority that the defendant’s duty to warn the plaintiff was a factual question for the jury because “snow covered the ice so that the ice was no longer an obvious condition.”
The majority correctly states: “The possessor of land has no duty to warn an invitee of a dangerous condition when the invitee has actual knowledge of the condition.” If there were any dispute between the parties that the plaintiff had actual knowledge *222of the condition, the question whether it was “obvious” or whether the plaintiff was “aware” of it might be relevant. On the claims of proof in this case, however, a jury conld not reasonably find other than that the plaintiff had actual knowledge of the very condition which caused his fall. In view of the claims of proof, I see no occasion for burdening the parties and the court with another trial merely because the trial judge removed this issue from the jury’s consideration.
Warning an invitee against dangers which are either known to him or are so obvious to him that he may be expected to discover them is unnecessary. 65 C.J.S. 768-70, Negligence, $ 63(53); Restatement (Second), 2 Torts § 343A and comment (e). The duty of a possessor of land to warn an invitee of a dangerous condition is one issue. The factual question of an injured party’s contributory negligence is an entirely separate one. Harbourn v. Katz Drug Co., 318 S.W.2d 226, 233 (Mo.); note, 74 A.L.R.2d 950.