Court Opinion

ID: 9448992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:51:51.181828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:38.395030
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The rubric used by the courts to the effect that when the evidence and the legitimate inferences to be drawn therefrom are viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing a motion for a directed verdict are such that reason- ■ able men in a fair and impartial exercise of their judgment may reach different conclusions, the motion should be denied, means, phrased differently, that if the evidence and inferences are sufficiently equivocal so that there exist reasonable and logical factual grounds for the jury to decide either way, it is a jury question; but if the evidence is such as to afford no reasonable and logical basis for a verdict against the movant, the court will not permit the jury to decide willy-nilly.
In this case, the first question is whether there exists a reasonable and logical factual basis to permit the jury to decide that defendant breached its duty to exercise reasonable care in making its premises safe for its business invitees. I do not think there is such a basis.
Although the concrete unloading area was covered with snow and ice, the condition was not hidden or unknown to plaintiff. Moreover, even if there were more snow and ice on the unloading area because of the drainage situation, it cannot be said that the accretion made the area less safe for a 16,000 pound standing truck than had there been only the normal accumulation of snow and ice. This is so because of plaintiff’s theory of how the accident occurred. That theory is that the truck tires, being warm from having been driven over the streets prior to pulling into the lot, caused the surface layer of ice to melt. This new interface of wet ice and rubber had a lower coefficient of friction than would have existed between an unmelted surface and the tires and enabled the truck to slip sideways a few minutes after it had been parked at the unloading dock.
This type of occurrence, resulting from a combination of physical factors the coincidence of which was obviously beyond the purview of the ordinary layman, was not such an event that the law should deem it a foreseeable risk and hence require defendant to ameliorate the *715condition in order to satisfy its duty of care to its business invitees. I do not think the law of Illinois requires store proprietors to clean snow and ice from the loading areas adjacent to their establishments so as to prevent large multiton delivery trucks from slipping sideways after they have been parked, particularly where any possible dangerous condition is as obvious to all and knowledge of the possible physical consequences incident to the condition is more imputable to a truck driver than to the proprietor of a store.
This case, in miy opinion, should be classified as one involving a “pure” accident. By allowing the verdict to stand, the trial judge permitted the jury to make the defendant an insurer of the safety of its business invitees contrary to the law of Illinois. I would reverse.