Court Opinion

ID: 9754225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:50:46.73458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:50.882108
License: Public Domain

*65Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno:
The majority opinion says: “All that plaintiff’s evidence established was that she slipped on steps that were slightly wet, apparently because they had just been washed.” (italics supplied) But as I view it, that is the whole crux of the case. The negligence lay in the very fact that the defendant’s employe liad washed down the steps and did not take the precautionary measures to rope off the stairs until they had dried, or to warn patrons of the slipperiness of the steps in their wet condition. We all know that in office buildings or in our own homes everyone is momentarily immobilized or urged to walk slowly and drag one’s feet over tile, marble, stone or linoleum just washed.
The law is not unreasonable — -or should not be. It only asks what is fair and just. It only charges one with what is foreseeable. The proprietor of a restaurant is engaged in business for a profit; he invites people to come in to his establishment to spend money. Is it unfair to expect that he should adopt reasonable precautions to prevent those patrons from injury? Suppose someone had dropped soup on the stairs? Can there be any question about the responsibility of the proprietor, (once he learned of the spilling actually or constructively,) to take the required measures to safeguard patrons from slipping on the spilled soup? And how does that responsibility differ if the slipperiness is caused by water or any other substance of which the defendant is aware?
In Nettis v. General Tire Co., 317 Pa. 204, this court said: “All the authorities agree that it is incumbent upon the owner of premises upon which persons come by invitation, express or implied, to maintain such premises in a reasonably safe condition for the contemplated uses thereof and the purposes for which the invitation was extended.”
*66In Dalgleish v. Oppenheim, Collins & Co., 302 Pa. 88, 91, 152 A. 759, this Court also said: “It is, of course, a storekeeper’s duty to use ordinary care to protect a customer from harm.”
The majority opinion distinguishes the facts in the case of Flora et ux. v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 330 Pa. 166, 198 A. 663, from the ones in the case at bar, but the principle is the same. There, the floor had been made slippery because of snow, water and slush tracked in by patrons. The defendant’s employes mopped up the floor from time to time but did not do so for an hour and a half prior to the accident. The Supreme Court, affirming the verdict for the plaintiff said: “The floor of the store was covered with smooth linoleum which had, as one witness described it, ‘a slippery disposition.’ It is a matter open to common observation that many stores have floor coverings of rubber or other materials which are proof against slipping. It was shown that it was defendant’s practice in bad weather to strew either an anti-slip compound or sawdust on the floor, to prevent slipping. This indicates that defendant was aware of a floor condition which might cause injury to its customers. That this condition could have been obviated by comparatively inexpensive attention is too clear to require argument. If a combination of a ‘smooth linoleum’ with Avater or snow produced a slippery condition at a place where invitees had occasion to walk, sometimes, as in the instant case, with packages in their arms or hands, it Avas defendant’s duty to correct that condition.”
I believe that the learned court beloAV erred in rejecting the proffered expert testimony. Whether we wish to accept it or not, we are living in a specialized age and no one can possibly know all about the deAÚces, equipment and paraphernalia we come into contact with every day of our lives. While steps, of course, are rather commonplace, there must be hundreds of differ*67ent materials from which they can be constructed, some of which are slippery under certain conditions and others which are not. The plaintiff offered to show that the steps in the defendant’s restaurant were made of a material known as terrazzo. A pamphlet issued by the National Safety Council announced that: “Terrazzo, tile, marble, mosaic, and polished concrete floor surfaces are particularly hazardous when wet. The washing of such floors should be done at times when the traffic is light, preferably at night. If this is not practicable, the area being cleaned should be roped off until thoroughly dry.”
Did the defendant observe these precautions, and if not, why not? Did the defendant use the care required to save harmless its customers? This was a question of fact to be decided by a jury, not a question of law to be categorically ruled on by the judge.
At the trial, plaintiff’s counsel argued that, if, because of their composition and construction, the steps became slippery when wet, a duty devolved upon the defendant to install safety treads. The Court repelled this argument with the observation: “They don’t have to have these metal safety treads; some steps have them, some don’t have them. It doesn’t charge the property owner with negligence because he hasn’t got the latest devices; he doesn’t have to keep on changing nor rebuilding the steps all the time.”
A restaurateur, of course, is not required to go into the step-building business, but he cannot endanger life and limb of patrons out of a reluctance to meet hazardous conditions, especially when they can be met and conquered by the expenditures of a comparatively small sum. In Strobel v. Park, 292 Pa. 200, 140 A. 877, which involved an elevator accident, the defendant denied that he was required to install the latest safety devices. This Court said: “When a recognized standard of comparison (namely, other- elevators) is present, it furnishes *68the basis for concluding that defendant was negligent. An elevator owner must keep pace with science, art and modern improvements in appliances; his duty to his passengers is to provide and make use of the best and most approved machinery and devices in general practical use for the safety of passengers.”
With what greater reason should the owner of'a restaurant be required, to expend a comparatively trifling amount in installing safety treads? Especially when the defendant used that protective device on the top step of each .flight , of the very stairway in dispute;
The Trial Judge said: “It is not negligence to wipe a floor down but here there is no evidence that this was done and there is no evidence how long the condition had existed.” In reply to this, it is enough to say that we have positive evidence that the steps were wet and it does no violence to the law of cause and effect to assume that the floor was wiped down by employes of the defendant. . Who else would do it? Common sense rules out that a total stranger would come into Horn and Hardarts and proceed to wipe down a whole flight of stairs. And since the wiping down operation could only have been performed by an employe, it follows that the defendant was. charged with the negligence of its own servant or agent.'
It is. no startling innovation to declare that in a situation of this kind the plaintiff was entitled to have her case heard by the jury. In the case of Loney v. Denenberg, 166 Pa. Superior Ct. 378, 382, 71 A. 2d 842, the plaintiff was injured when she slipped on a floor which had been sprinkled with a cleaning compound. Recovery in the. lower court was affirmed by the -Superior Court on the theory thht it was a . question of fact for the jury, to .'decide, whether it was. this cleaning compound which caused the'plaintiff to'slip: “Where, as'here,'there may be .'a reasonable difference' of opinion :as. to whether appellants’ iiegligeneenvas'. the .proxfc *69mate cause of the injuries, the question of legal causation is for the jury.” In the case at bar I see no reason why a jury should not have been permitted to decide whether the plaintiff’s slipping on the floor was or was not the result of defendant’s negligence.
In the case of Drucker v. Moskovitz, 119 Pa. Superior Ct. 377, 181 A. 367, the plaintiff entered a store to make a purchase. While her back was turned, an employe began to wash the tile flooring with soap and water. The plaintiff, in turning did not observe that the floor was wet, slipped and was injured. A verdict in her favor was affirmed by the Superior Court. The only difference between that case and the one at bar is that in that case, direct evidence was presented as to the washing of the floor, and here the washing had to be inferred from the circumstances, but the inference was a natural and logical one and, in the absence of refutation by the defendant, was unassailable.
Of course, the law does not lay down any doctrine that regardless of what happens to an invitee, he may recover against the proprietor for damages he may suffer, but it does support the proposition that reason, common sense and elemental justice require that a restaurateur in business for profit and who anticipates, as he may anticipate, that employes may drop leaves of spinach on the floor on which someone may fall, or may accidentally smash a bottle of milk and others be injured by flying glass, can reasonably anticipate that an employe of his may wash down steps and allow customers to use them before they are dry. These are situations that jurors are familiar with, and I do not understand a refusal to submit to a jury any situation resulting from the common denominator of everyday experience. If the Horn and Hardart Baking Company exercised every reasonable precaution, or if it should develop that the steps in question were not wet at all, the jury", under proper instructions from the *70court, reinforced by argument from defendant’s counsel, would so find, and the plaintiff would have failed to establish her case. But it does not comport with my idea of modern justice to say that the accident could not have happened in the manner described by the plaintiff’s witnesses when there is no evidence that it could have happened in any other way, except the “evidence” of sheer hypothesis and guessing.
In entering the nonsuit against the plaintiff, the lower court said that before there can be a recovery in a case of this kind there “must be an obviously dangerous condition.” But this observation slips on the wet steps of a faulty logic. For if the condition were obviously dangerous, the plaintiff could not possibly recover because she would then be charged with contributory negligence. It was the very latent and lurking quality of the slipperiness which lured the plaintiff to her injury and produced the responsibility of the defendant, since the instrumentality was under its exclusive control and within its immediate supervision.
I would remove the nonsuit with a procedendo.