Court Opinion

ID: 9545532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:14:59.559274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:02.891433
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, disagreeing with the main opinion’s assertion that the instant case is distinguishable from Lindsey v. Eccles Hotel. The main opinion says “There the plaintiff slipped on water spilled on the floor of a cafe. Both employees and customers had access to the water, so it would have involved mere conjecture as to who spilled it.” Almost identical circumstances existed in the store, so it would have involved mere conjecture as to who placed the box on the floor.
In the Lindsey case we said the same thing as has the main opinion and yet we arrived at an opposite result, when we asserted that “there was no evidence as to how the water got onto the floor, by whom it was deposited, exactly when it arrived there or that the defendant had knowledge of its presence” so that “under such circumstances, a jury cannot be permitted to speculate that the defendant was negligent.”
It is elementary that a plaintiff has the burden of showing negligence on the part of defendant, and the showing here was, in *118my opinion, less impressive than in the Lindsey case. It is also elementary that a defendant knew of the hazard or reasonably should have known of it, and the opinion’s recitation 'of the facts that here was a little box of the type used in grocery stores usually not used by customers does not show a jury question, and it is far from proving negligence.1
It seems to me that under the facts adduced that proved nothing in the way of compensable negligence, makes the store owner an absolute insurer, far beyond any theory of liability based on a business invitee theory.

. See also Hampton v. Rowley, 10 Utah 2d 169, 350 P.2d 151 (1960); Safeway Stores v. Ciner (Okl.), 380 P.2d 712 (1963).