Court Opinion

ID: 9812003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:35:40.140523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:51.201081
License: Public Domain

RaeNhill, J.,
dissenting: Plaintiff does not sue or pray relief against Gilmore Clinic, Inc. Strictly speaking, it is not a defendant but a respondent, brought in to answer the claim of the defendant for contribution in the event plaintiff shall recover on her cause of action. The Machine Company is the one and only defendant and will be so treated.
Defendant installed a manually operated elevator in the Gilmore Clinic Building and agreed to return later and convert it into an automatic or push button type. At the time of the accident described in the complaint, its employees were engaged in making the conversion.
The elevator well extended about four and one-half feet below the level of the first or ground floor. The work required one of the employees to get into this well to adjust or attach some wiring. It was necessary for him to provide a means of exit. This was done by leaving the doors ajar, furnishing an open space of about eighteen inches. The elevator was between the first and second floors, leaving about five and one-half feet clearance on the first floor. A sign was placed on or near the elevator car push button, giving warning that the elevator was not in use. The hall or passageway was well lighted. Plaintiff, apparently in perfectly normal condition, except that she was pregnant and her eyesight was impaired, entered the well-lighted first floor hallway, “blacked out,” and, while in that condition, walked some distance to the back of the hall where the elevator was located, and in some unexplained manner fell in the elevator shaft. She seeks now to hold the defendant liable for the resulting injuries.
The defendant’s employees were engaged in doing lawful work in a lawful manner. That the doors of the elevator shaft were left partly open to provide an exit for the workmen, being a necessary incident of the work, could not constitute negligence. However, the work was being done where people were accustomed to come and go. Therefore, it was the duty of the defendant to give such warning as would put a reasonably prudent person, exercising ordinary care for his own safety, on notice *548of the danger, even though it was necessary to leave the elevator shaft doors partly open to furnish an exit for the workman in the elevator pit. This I concede. But it is not the province of the Court to prescribe the type of warning which should have been provided. We do not prescribe the size of the danger flag. Murray v. R. R., 218 N.C. 392. We merely determine whether the method of warning adopted by defendant evidences a want of due care sufficient to require the submission of the question to the jury. The court below answered in the negative. The ruling is presumed to he correct. The plaintiff must show error.
Here the partly lowered elevator, the partially closed doors, and the notice on the elevator bell each gave notice that the elevator was not at the first floor elevator entrance to receive passengers. In combination they were amply sufficient to give notice to any person of ordinary prudence. This was the kind or type of notice defendant was required to give. Had it draped the elevator in red warning flags, these would not have served to give plaintiff notice. Had it placed a sawhorse or similar barrier in front of the opening, this, in all probability, would have increased the danger to plaintiff by causing her to pitch head foremost into the pit..
Indeed, we have said there is no duty to warn when the danger is obvious. Deaton v. Eton College, 226 N.C. 433. When the lighting is such that the condition can be discovered in the exercise of ordinary care, the failure to warn imposes no liability. Benton v. Building Co., 223 N.C. 809.
In this connection we must remember that plaintiff was not the defendant’s invitee. The Gilmore Clinic, Inc., had invited her to enter, but the only invitation defendant had extended was an invitation to stay away from the elevator.
To entitle one to rely upon an implied invitation to enter, his purpose must be of interest or advantage to the invitor. Pafford v. Construction Co., 217 N.C. 730, and cases cited. In the Pafford case we draw the distinction between the owner of the building who extends the invitation to enter therein and the construction company working thereon.
The fact alone that the plaintiff, on account of her temporary mental deficiency or incapacity, was unable to exercise ordinary care for her own safety did not charge defendant with the duty to exercise increased care. Worthington v. Mencer, 11 So. 70, 17 L.R.A. 407. In the absence of knowledge thereof, defendant was not bound to take notice of plaintiff’s infirmity. Daily v. R. R., 106 N.C. 301; Doggett v. Chicago, B. & Q. Ry. Co., 112 N.W. 171; Carter v. Nunda, 66 N.Y.S. 1059; Yeager v. Spirit Lake, 88 N.W. 1095; Hill v. Glenwood, 100 N.W. 522.
The law does not impose upon one the duty of giving to another the care due only to the deaf, blind, and unconscious until he has notice that such person is suffering from one of those disabilities. One is not charge*549able with, the negligence for not guarding against a danger of which he has no knowledge. Anno., 69 L.R.A. 536; Anno., Ann. Cas. 1912 C 1072.
“When the mere negligence of another causes or contributes to the injury of a person who is mentally incompetent to such a degree, if the conduct of the injured person would have amounted to such contributory negligence as would have avoided his claim to relief if he had been capable of exercising care in his own behalf, the person inflicting the injury is not to be held to a liability which would not have been incurred under the same circumstances in favor of a person of ordinary capacity, unless he had notice of the injured person’s mental deficiency, and of his conseqirent helplessness and peril in the circumstances in which he was placed. The duty of observing special precautions for the safety of another, because the latter, by reason of mental imbecility, cannot be influenced by the dictates of ordinary prudence, is not cast upon one who is not charged with notice of the other’s peril, and of his lack of sufficient intelligence to avoid it. When it is sought, in behalf of an adult, to avoid the consequences of his own conduct, and to charge another with liability for a result to which such conduct contributed, the burden is upon him to show that he was not responsible for his own acts, and that the person sought to he charged was under the duty of dealing with him as one incompetent to care for himself.” Worthington v. Mencer, supra.
Applying these principles of law to the facts appearing of record, I am led to the conclusion that the plaintiff has failed to make out a case of negligence. But concede negligence. This, alone is not sufficient to impose liability.
Proof that an accident is a natural consequence of negligence is not enough to establish the negligence as the proximate cause of the accident. Smith v. Whitley, 223 N.C. 534; 38 A.J. 708. Negligence does not create liability unless it is the proximate cause of the injury, and foreseeability is an essential element of proximate cause. Wood v. Telephone Co., 228 N.C. 605; Lee v. Upholstery Co., 227 N.C. 88; Boyette v. R. R., 227 N.C. 406; Shaw v. Barnard, 229 N.C. 713; Watkins v. Furnishing Co., 224 N.C. 674; Tyson v. Ford, 228 N.C. 778; Murray v. R. R., supra; Mills v. Moore, 219 N.C. 25; Luttrell v. Mineral Co., 220 N.C. 782; Bechtler v. Bracken, 218 N.C. 515; Ellis v. Refining Co., 214 N.C. 388; Fore v. Geary, 191 N.C. 90; Harton v. Tel. Co., 141 N.C. 455.
A defendant is not required to foresee or anticipate “whatsoever shall come to pass,” Beach v. Patton, 208 N.C. 134, or to stretch foresight into omniscience. Wood v. Telephone Co., supra; Gant v. Gant, 197 N.C. 164; Montgomery v. Blades, 222 N.C. 463. A person is bound to foresee only those consequences that may naturally and proximately flow from his negligence. If the injury complained of was not reasonably foreseeable in the exercise of due care, no liability is created. Wood v. Tele*550phone Co., supra; Gant v. Gant, supra; Lee v. Upholstery Co., supra; Rattley v. Powell, 223 N.C. 134; Osborne v. Coal Co., 207 N.C. 545; Watkins v. Furnishing Co., supra; Butner v. Spease, 217 N.C. 82; Brady v. R. R., 222 N.C. 367.
As stated by Stacy, G. J., in Tyson v. Ford, supra: “The test of liability for negligence ... is the departure from the normal conduct of the reasonably prudent man, or the care and prevision which a reasonably prudent person would employ in the circumstances.”
“One is bound to anticipate and provide against what usually happens and what is likely to happen; but it would impose too heavy a responsibility to hold him bound in like manner to guard against what is unusual and unlikely to happen, or what, as is sometimes said, is only remotely and slightly probable . . . One is not charged with foreseeing that which could not be expected' to happen.” Brady v. R. R., supra; Hiatt v. Rilter, 223 N.C. 262; Fore v. Geary, supra. The injury must be one which the author of the primary negligence could have reasonably foreseen and expected. Shaw v. Barnard, supra; Harton v. Tel. Co., supra. The law holds men liable only for the consequences of their actions which they can and should foresee and by reasonable care or prudence provide against. When the negligent condition created by the defendant is merely a circumstance of the accident and not its proximate cause, no liability is imposed. Lee v. Upholstery Co., supra.
In my opinion the conclusion that the fact plaintiff “blacked out” and wandered down a well-lighted hall, into the elevator well was reasonably foreseeable in the exercise of due care, is not sustained by the record. To hold the defendant liable for the resulting injury is to eliminate foreseeability as an element of proximate cause, require omniscience on the part of the defendant, and make it liable “for casualties which, though possible, were wholly improbable.” Brady v. R. R., supra.
Defendant knew doctors maintained offices in the Gilmore Building, and that their patients entered the building and used the elevator. There is no evidence that it knew or had reason to know that the lame, the halt, and the blind entered alone and unattended. To hold that it should have guarded against plaintiff’s “black out” and the resulting danger to her safety is to say that it should have foreseen a condition plaintiff herself did not anticipate or guard against.
Jones v. Bland, 182 N.C. 70, cited and relied on in the majority opinion, is in my opinion clearly distinguishable. The defendant there was clearly negligent. He was the proprietor of the hotel. His employee removed the elevator and left the elevator shaft open and unprotected. Sufficient light to enable plaintiff, his invitee, to observe the absence of the elevator was not provided. None of these circumstances exist here.
*551In principle, Lee v. Upholstery Co., supra, is more nearly in point. There the plaintiff was an invitee; the defendant was the invitor. It removed the elevator and left the elevator shaft open while its invitee was nearby, working within a few feet thereof. It gave no notice whatever of the dangerous condition thus created, although it was under the duty to keep its premises in a reasonably safe condition for the use of its invitees. The rope plaintiff was using to tie furniture on his truck slipped and he stumbled backward into the elevator well. The factual distinctions between that case and this certainly are not favorable to this plaintiff. Yet the type of injury there disclosed was not reasonably fore-, seeable. So we held. Here, however, the defendant ought to have foreseen plaintiff would “black out” and while unconscious squeeze through the narrow opening between the elevator doors and fall into the elevator pit. So the majority concludes. I am unable to follow the logic of that conclusion.
Plaintiff’s accident was most unfortunate.- On this record the resulting injuries were due to no fault of her own. But this is no cause for shifting the burden to the defendant. It but emphasizes the soundness of the .truism “hard eases make bad law” which we should ever keep in mind.
In Griggs v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 218 N.C. 166, we said: “The Court is reluctant to advance the standard of due care to such an unreasonable length as would practically put every accident in the category of actionable negligence.” I fear that the majority have now overcome the reluctance there expressed. In any event, I cannot concur in the majority opinion. Instead I vote to affirm.
"WiNBORNE, J., concurs in dissent.