Court Opinion

ID: 9707361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:09:49.664915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:31.790548
License: Public Domain

Dooley, J.,
dissenting. I concur in the rejection of a warranty theory for personal injury damages. I would not decide whether to abolish the control test. We have not had the benefit of briefing and argument on that issue since the parties agreed that control was unnecessary and that is the law of this case. However, I believe that the jury instructions contain two substantial errors in the application of negligence standards to this case. Accordingly, I would reverse for a new trial.
The trial court instructed the jury that, in order to show negligence on the part of the landlord, the plaintiff must prove that “the condition of the stairway under consideration was unreasonably dangerous.” The court stated that a “stairway is unreasonably dangerous when its likelihood of causing injury is beyond that ordinarily to be expected, and which should not be expected to be safely negotiated by the use of ordinary care.” The court explained that when old buildings are modified and converted into apartments they may not be “as convenient or as safe” as more modern buildings. According to the court, when a tenant chooses to rent in these older buildings with the knowl*234edge that the building has a “less than convenient stairway which requires some additional care to negotiate, the tenant cannot complain if he or she fails to use the care required to descend the stairs successfully.” (Emphasis added.) In such a case, in effect, the tenant “assumes the risk of injury” posed by the hazardous stairway.
As the majority states, we do not reverse for errors in a jury charge as long as it breathes the true spirit and doctrine of the law and there is no fair ground to say the jury was misled. It is, however, the duty of the court to charge fully and correctly upon every point indicated by the evidence. See Nauceder v. Howard, 127 Vt. 274, 278, 247 A.2d 76, 79 (1968). The charge here contains a confusing merger of negligence and contributory negligence concepts, including- assumption of the risk. On top of the confusion, there are two significant deviations from well-established negligence law. Accordingly, there are more than fair grounds to believe that the jury could have been misled.
The first error was in charging that the age of a building was a factor which lowers the degree of care that a landlord must exercise. The charge states explicitly that apartments in old buildings do not have to be as safe as apartments in new buildings. The majority accepts this specific, unique emphasis on the age of the building as simply an application of the principle that reasonable care is determined in light of “all the circumstances,” quoting Sargent v. Ross, 113 N.H. 388, 391, 308 A.2d 528, 530 (1973). The more relevant quote from Sargent comes later in the opinion: “A landlord must act as a reasonable person under all of the circumstances including the likelihood of injury to others, the probable seriousness of such injuries, and the burden of reducing or avoiding the risk.” Id. at 397, 308 A.2d at 534. This statement of the law has been generally accepted. See Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, Inc., 469 F.2d 97,100 (D.C. Cir. 1972) (“A landowner must act as a reasonable man in maintaining his property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden of avoiding the risk.”); Moloso v. State, 644 P.2d 205, 219 (Alaska 1982) (landowner *235must act as reasonable person in maintaining property “‘in view of all the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden on the respective parties of avoiding the risk’”) (quoting Webb v. City & Borough of Sitka, 561 P.2d 731 (Alaska 1977)); Becker v. IRM Corp., 38 Cal. 3d 454, 468, 698 P.2d 116, 125, 213 Cal. Rptr. 213, 222 (1985) (en banc) (landlord “must act toward his tenant as a reasonable person under all of the circumstances, including the likelihood of injury, the probable seriousness of injury, [and] the burden of reducing or avoiding the risk”); Stephens v. Stearns, 106 Idaho 249, 258, 678 P.2d 41, 50 (1984) (quoting Sargent, 113 N.H. at 397, 308 A.2d at 534); Young v. Garwacki, 380 Mass. 162,169, 402 N.E.2d 1045,1049 (1980) (quoting Sargent); Basso v. Miller, 40 N.Y.2d 233, 241, 352 N.E.2d 868, 872,386 N.Y.S.2d 564, 568 (1976) (quoting Arbaugh’s Restaurant, 469 F.2d at 100).
When one considers the age of a building in relation to these basic factors, one can see that it can cut either way in specific cases. If the consequences of age increase the likelihood of injury to tenants and increase the likely seriousness of an injury, and these increased risks are not offset by an increase in the burden of avoiding the injury, then the landlord might have to take additional safety precautions in an older building. If, in another case, the increased risks are more than outweighed by the increased burdens, the landlord might not have to take as many safety precautions as in a newer building. In a case involving an older building, an instruction that age always reduces the landlord’s responsibility with respect to safety is simply wrong and clearly prejudicial to the tenant.
Even if general principles of landlord and tenant law were not in conflict with the court’s charge, I believe it cannot stand in light of the applicable housing code. The code requires premises to be safe, obviously establishing a standard of care. It does not provide that older buildings can be less safe or unsafe. Thus, the charge on the age of the building is in conflict with the charge on violation of the municipal housing code, and the jury had no way to reconcile the conflict.
The second major defect in the charge is acknowledged by the majority. In the part of the charge ostensibly defining defendant’s standard of liability, the trial court added language *236clearly stating that a tenant who “voluntarily rents an apartment” knowing it has a “less than convenient stairway” assumes the risk of injury if the tenant “fails to use the care required to descend the stairs successfully.” I find two errors in this statement. It adds a “secondary” assumption of the risk defense, although we have held that assumption of the risk of this type is simply an aspect of contributory negligence. See Sunday v. Stratton Corp., 136 Vt. 293, 304, 390 A.2d 398, 404 (1978). Accordingly, “use of assumption of risk language is irrelevant and confusing in a jury instruction on comparative negligence.” Id.; see also Perkins v. Windsor Hospital Corp., 142 Vt. 305, 310, 455 A.2d 810, 814 (1982) (use of assumption of risk language reversible error because “parties were entitled to a jury free from irrelevancies and possible confusion”).
Farther, this language directly undercuts the standard for landlord liability adopted by the trial court in this case. As one court stated in abandoning landlord immunity:
The practical result of this archaic rule has been to discourage repairs of rented premises.... [A] landlord with knowledge of a defect has less incentive to repair it. And the tenant, who often has a short-term lease, limited funds, and limited experience dealing with such defects, will not be inclined to pay for expensive work on a place he will soon be leaving.
Young v. Garwacki, 380 Mass, at 168, 402 N.E.2d at 1049. The import of the trial court’s charge is that a tenant who confronts an unsafe stairway in an old building must make it safe or use extraordinary care to negotiate it despite its unsafe condition. In essence, the language puts us back in the situation where the landlord has little, if any, liability because the tenant accepts the risk by renting the apartment. We directly rejected that theory in Beck v. Dutra, 129 Vt. 615, 618, 285 A.2d 732, 735 (1971), where we held that a tenant does not assume the risk of injury from a dangerous stairway because use of the stairway was a “necessitous action ... and not a deliberate act involving a voluntary choice within the meaning of the doctrine.”
Although the majority acknowledges the error in the assumption of the risk language, it finds that it does not warrant reversal because it was merely a transition to the contributory negligence discussion and the jury did not find contributory *237negligence. The instructions here were written with appropriate subtitles to guide the jury in what they were considering. The language at issue precedes a section distinctly headed, “contributory negligence,” and there is no indication that it was a transition to that section or was part of the contributory negligence discussion. Because of its placement, it is very possible that the jury dealt with assumption of the risk as part of its determination that defendant was not negligent, without having reached the issue of contributory negligence. Even if the assumption of the risk language were included with the contributory negligence discussion, it would be confusing to the jury, as we held in Windsor Hospital Corp.. This is not a ease where the charge, taken as a whole, is clearly understandable, though not worded as the appealing party desires. On the contrary, the charge does not correctly state the law and is confusing.
I would reverse and remand for a new trial. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Allen joins in this dissent.