Court Opinion

ID: 9544431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:55:34.841931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:12:57.085262
License: Public Domain

HOLMAN, J.
Plaintiff brought an action for damages resulting from personal injuries allegedly caused by defendants’ negligence. A judgment was rendered for defendants pursuant to a jury verdict. Plaintiff appeals.
In the process of shopping for an automobile plaintiff entered the showroom of defendant Stevens *296Auto Sales, Inc. (Stevens). A salesman for Stevens escorted her to a door which separated the showroom from the service department. It was the salesman’s intention to escort plaintiff through the service department to inspect a vehicle which was outside the building. The salesman left plaintiff to go and get a key to the vehicle. It is disputed whether plaintiff had passed through the doorway into the service department at the time the salesman left her to get the key. In any event, plaintiff stepped through the doorway to the service department and then to the right to clear the doorway, which was being used by others, while she waited for the salesman. As plaintiff waited she stood between the front of a parked pickup truck and the wall of the service department.
The truck had been left with the defendant Stevens by the defendant Smoot for repair. Upon returning for the vehicle Smoot was directed by an employe of Stevens to drive the truck from the service department as the employes of Stevens were busy. Smoot entered the truck and activated the starter while the truck was in gear. As a result, the truck lurched forward, pinning plaintiff between the front of the truck and the wall, and inflicted the injuries for which she seeks recompense. Both plaintiff and the defendant Smoot deny they were aware of the presence of the other.
Plaintiff alleged in her complaint that the defendant Stevens was negligent in parking the truck in gear, failing to set the emergency brake, failing to drive the vehicle from the service department, and in not leaving plaintiff in a safe place or warning her of the dangers present in the service area. Plaintiff alleged that the defendant Smoot was negligent in *297starting her vehicle while it was in gear, and in not maintaining a lookout for plaintiff and control of her car. The defendants alleged plaintiff was contributorily negligent in not keeping a lookout and in standing in front of the vehicle while it was being moved, and:
“In voluntarily and knowingly assuming the risk of injury by being in the service area of the Stevens Auto Sales where vehicles were being moved.”
The defendant Stevens made other allegations of contributory negligence which were either duplicative of those mentioned or immaterial to this appeal.
The sole assignment of error relates to the propriety of the giving of the following instruction on assumption of risk:
“You are instructed that a person is said to assume a risk when the person freely, voluntarily and knowingly manifests an assent to dangerous conduct or to the creation or maintenance of the dangerous conditions and voluntarily exposes herself to that danger, when the person knows a danger exists in either the conduct or conditions of another or in the condition, use or operation of property and voluntarily places themselves or remains within the area of danger.
“A person who thus assumes a risk is not entitled to recover for damage caused to them which resulted from the dangerous condition or conduct or activity to which they voluntarily exposed themselves.”
The following exception was taken to the instruction:
“We further except to Instruction No. 6 which is the instruction the Court gave based upon Franks versus Smith, 251 Oregon 98 and tendered by Defendant Stevens on assumption of risk which we believe to be an element and part of contributory *298negligence and should not have been separately instructed by the Court.”
The term assumption of risk may be used in a “primary” or a “secondary” sense. 2 Harper and James, The Law of Torts § 21.1 (1956). In its primary sense it refers to submitting one’s self to the risk of injury by another in a situation where the other owes no duty to plaintiff and, therefore, does not act negligently in inflicting the injury. An example is where a player is injured at football by another who is playing within the rules. See Vendrell v. Sch. Dist. 26C, Malheur Co., 233 Or 1, 376 P2d 406 (1962). Also, Franks v. Smith, 251 Or 98, 444 P2d 954 (1968). In its secondary sense assumption of risk refers to knowingly submitting one’s self to the dangers of another’s negligent acts. See Thayer v. Ore. Fed. of Square Dance Clubs, 258 Or 302, 482 P2d 717 (1971), and Ritter v. Beals et al, 225 Or 504, 358 P2d 1080 (1961). In its secondary sense assumption of risk is nothing more than contributory negligence.
Following the above analysis it is clear that in the present case defendants’ allegation of plaintiff’s assumption of risk was nothing more than a general and non-specific allegation that plaintiff was contributorily negligent. Indeed, it was alleged as a specification of contributory negligence.
As pointed out in plaintiff’s exception to the instruction, if an instruction upon assumption of risk is given when assumption of risk is used in its secondary sense and an instruction upon contributory negligence is given as well, defendants secure a double instruction on the same issue. The following instructions on contributory negligence had already been *299given prior to the instruction on assumption of risk to which objection was made:
“Now, in order for the Defendants to prevail on their claims of contributory negligence on the part of the Plaintiff they must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Plaintiff was negligent in at least one respect charged in the Defendant’s answer’s which was a proximate cause of any damage the Plaintiff may have suffered.
* * * *
“Negligence is the doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do or the failure to do something which a reasonably prudent person would do under circumstances similar to those shown by the evidence.
“It is the failure to use ordinary or reasonable care.
“Ordinary or reasonable care is that care which persons of ordinary prudence would use in order to avoid an injury to themselves or others under circumstances similar to those shown by the evidence.
“You will note that the person whose conduct we set up as a standard is not the extraordinary cautious individual, nor the exceptionally skillful one, but a person of reasonable and ordinary prudence.
“Now, contributory negligence is negligence on the part of a Plaintiff which, combining with a negligence of a Defendant, if any, contributes as a proximate cause in bringing about the injury.
“Of course as I have instructed you a Plaintiff who is contributorily negligent cannot recover for such injuries.
Mb * # *
“You are instructed that an invitee may not recover if she acts unreasonable in encountering the danger or having reasonably encountered the *300clanger she thereafter fails to exercise due care for her own safety.”①
The instructions upon contributory negligence adequately advised the jury and the challenged instruction should not have been given. See Ritter v. Beals, supra at 520.
Defendants point to our opinion in Studer v. Brown, 244 Or 24, 415 P2d 509 (1966), in which the following instruction was given:
“ ‘I instruct you that even if you should find that defendants, or either of them, were negligent and that their negligence, if any, proximately caused the injuries to plaintiff, nevertheless plaintiff would not be permitted to recover if you should find either that he fully realized the risk and consciously encountered it, or that while he may not have realized the danger involved in exposing himself to the condition, he failed to exercise the care which children of his age, intelligence and experience are required to exercise for their own protection.’ (Emphasis supplied)” 244 Or at 27.
Plaintiff was a 12-year-old boy who played with some explosive chemicals and was injured. The court approved the instruction in the following language:
“This instruction simply assumes that the jury has reached the point of determining that defendants were negligent as alleged in plaintiff’s complaint, and then proceeds to instruct on the duties of the plaintiff as a child in regard to contributory negligence which bars recovery.” 244 Or at 27.
Perhaps it is merely a matter of emphasis, but the *301terse explanation in Studer of what constituted contributory negligence on the part of a boy of 12 contrasts sharply with the instruction in the present ease which labors the matter and which does not purport to use it as an explanation of a kind of contributory negligence particularly applicable to the circumstances. The unfairness is aggravated by the instruction’s failure to inform the jury that “assumption of risk” as it was then being used was part of the negligence concept. The two instructions appear as if they concerned independent and non-related matters.
The defendant Stevens contends that there is no evidence of its negligence which was a cause of the accident. There is evidence sufficient for the jury to find that Stevens, through its employe the salesman, took plaintiff to and left her unattended in a dangerous area and that this was a cause without which the accident would not have occurred. We, therefore, believe there was sufficient evidence of defendant Stevens’ negligence to go to the jury.
 Stevens also contends plaintiff was contributorily negligent as a matter of law because she waited in the service department, stood between the front of a vehicle and the wall, and failed to see the defendant Smoot get in her vehicle. While plaintiff admitted that she knew that cars were being moved around, this court cannot say that the service department was so dangerous that plaintiff was guilty of negligence as a matter of law in remaining there. In addition, the jury could have found that a person of reasonable prudence who had never been in a service department before should not have been expected to realize the full extent of the danger. Neither can we say that plaintiff was contributorily negligent as a matter of law because she *302stood in front of a parked vehicle or because she failed to notice the defendant Smoot was about to start her car. These were matters for the jury.
The judgment of the trial court is reversed and the case is remanded for a new trial.

 These instructions are set forth to demonstrate that all instructions were given which were in any way necessary to an understanding or application of contributory negligence. It is not claimed that the instruction in question was duplicative of all of them.