Court Opinion

ID: 9447421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:34:45.370121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:02.179296
License: Public Domain

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I, of course, have no quarrel with the propositions of general law and of Missouri law set forth in some detail in the majority opinion. I am troubled, however, by the application of those propositions to the facts of this case, and I note that the opinion itself necessarily recognizes that the Missouri cases make it “very clear that each decision rests upon its own facts, and no clear-cut definitive boundaries may be found.”
This plaintiff, an adult and mature woman, within a few minutes (according to her own testimony) of the store’s announced 9:30 a. m. opening time known to her, was sitting upon or leaning against a narrow protective railing, obviously never intended as a seat or leaning place, with a portion of the back side of her body protruding 4 or 5 inches over the railing and into the exit path*7way. Her legs were crossed and only one foot was on the ground supporting her weight. As thus precariously posed on her perch, this plaintiff faced away from the entrance door which she knew was locked and also faced away from the exit door at a time when she knew people were within the store, when she knew the store was about to open, and when she knew (due to her having been at the store on numerous prior occasions during its business hours and due to her being “well acquainted with the operation of” the door) that the door, if opened for either exit or entrance, would strike her.
These facts, it seems to me, do not fit the usual pattern which exists when courts have determined that reasonable persons would be compelled to reach the same conclusion and that the plaintiff as a matter of law must be held not eon-tributorily negligent. I therefore feel that the issue of this plaintiff’s contributory negligence was one which the defendant was entitled to have passed upon by the jury.
Neither am I convinced that the trial court’s very brief reference in its instructions about the plaintiff’s exercise of ordinary care cured any error in its refusal to give the defendant’s requested instruction. The court’s entire statement as to this was:
“The first thing for you to determine is whether or not in taking that position she was in the exercise of ordinary care for her own safety, there wasn’t anything particularly dangerous about that sitution as she positioned herself.”
I would suppose that the last phrase completely nullified whatever mild force may have been contained in the first phrase and that the result of the comment, taken as a whole, was that the issue of plaintiff’s being “in the exercise of ordinary care for her own safety” was not at all before the jury.
I would reverse.