Court Opinion

ID: 9693219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:30:47.228661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:42.938223
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). Plaintiff charged the defendant with negligence, alleging duty and breach this way:
“(a) That defendant owed the duty to provide for plaintiff, adequate aisle space on the northerly side of its store back of its lunch-counter patrons;
“(b) It owed the duty not to block the passageway with a center display counter;
“ (c) To refrain from attempting to close off either aisle during the busy breakfast hour, which was then in progress;
“(d) To refrain from mopping the aisles during the busy breakfast hour;
“(e) To refrain from wetting the floor with mop water at that time;
“(f) To refrain from ineffectually barricading said northerly aisle;
“(g) It owed the duty to display a sign at eye level, warning plaintiff and lunch-counter guests and other patrons of unexpected danger, to-wit: a slippery floor;
*163“(h) It owed the duty to rope off said passageway under such circumstances in order to make the premises reasonable safe for invitees such as plaintiff.”
Viewing the record favorably to plaintiff as required in cases like this, we find no proof tending to support these allegations of duty and breach. Further, no facts were established by proof from which negligence — alleged in any above respect — might be inferred according to the rule of Carver v. Detroit & Saline Plank Road Co., 61 Mich 584 (followed in Kaminski v. Grand Trunk Western R. Co., 347 Mich 417). As in Daigneau v. Young, 349 Mich 632, plaintiff at best proved occurrence of an unfortunate accident absent negligence as charged against the defendant.
In token of these necessary conclusions my Brother Kelly concludes that “The lower court did not err in holding that plaintiff failed to prove defendant was negligent.” While Judge Culehan did not so hold* — that plaintiff failed to prove defendant was negligent, — I agree with Mr. Justice Kelly that the directed verdict below was right for want of proof or inference from proof on which defendant might be found guilty of any act of negligence as charged against it. This turns us to the question of contributory negligence Mr. Justice Kelly considers on strength (or weakness) of Jones v. Michigan Racing Association, 346 Mich 648.
I do not care to join in perpetuation of Jones’ con-fusticating- error — that of measuring contributory negligence by the yardstick of negligence as charged by plaintiff against the defendant — and register again my disagreement with yesterday’s majority on that score. Furthermore, all being agreed with respect to the presently-adjudged want of proof of *164negligence as charged, there is no occasion for consideration of or reference to the subject of contributory negligence, since it necessarily implies negligence on the part of the defendant (Rockwell v. Grand Trunk Western R. Co., 253 Mich 144; Warwick v. Blackney, 272 Mich 231).
The defendant’s averred duty to the plaintiff in a negligence case is not the same duty as the law charges is owing by the plaintiff to himself — that of protecting his person from injury — and we do the cause of certainty and accuracy no service by direct or inferential suggestion to such effect. The distinction to which I allude is given by Restatement and I timidly venture motion that we proceed to recognize it in this case of Biseeglia.
“Difference between negligence and contributory negligence. Contributory negligence differs from that negligence which subjects the actor to liability for harm done to others in one important particular. Negligence is conduct which creates an undue risk of harm to others. Contributory negligence is conduct which involves an undue risk of harm to the person who sustains it. In the one case the reasonable man, whose conduct furnishes the standard to which all normal adults must conform, is a person who pays reasonable regard to the safety of others; in the other, the reasonable man is a reasonably prudent man, who as such pays reasonable regard to his own safety.” (2 Restatement, Torts, § 463, p 1227.)
I vote to affirm on ground that the first essential of plaintiff’s case — proof of causal negligence of defendant — is lacking as a matter of law. Costs to defendant.
Smith, Edwards, and Voelker, JJ., concurred with Black, J.

 Judge Culehan directed a verdict for defendant on sole assigned ¡ground that plaintiff had “failed to show he was not guilty of conj-iributory negligence.”