Court Opinion

ID: 9760994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:28:01.623981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:19.520889
License: Public Domain

*428Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
The plaintiff, Mary Jerdon, was injured when she fell in a pool of water in the defendants’ basement which was lighted in such a manner as to obscure the presence of the offending liquid. The Trial Judge directed a verdict for the defendant and this Court has affirmed the judgment. The Majority Opinion says: “There was no reason for defendants to believe that after six days of residing in defendants’ home and using the stairway numerous times daily in the course of her work, the wife-plaintiff would not have herself become aware of the lighting conditions of the recreation room.”
But this only states part of the case. The plaintiff said that the lighting was inadequate because of the conditions prevailing on the day she fell. She pointed out that the only switch available to one descending the stairs threw on such a feeble illumination that it lighted up only part of the room below. There were additional electric lights in the basement but they could not be turned on until one reached the floor, when, of course it would be too late to help someone who had already measured his length on the floor. Even so, it was not the inadequate lighting of itself which caused the plaintiff’s injuries. It was the poor illumination plus the pool of water, of whose presence the plaintiff was ignorant. She had been a domestic in the defendants’ employ for six days, but nothing happened in those six days to warn her that at any unexpected moment the basement floor would cover with a fluid, which, because of its transparency, would mask its presence.
The inadequate lighting was only one negligent circumstance. The other was the water. Together they formed a vise which crushed the plaintiff and broke her hip.
*429In Casey v. Singer, 372 Pa. 284, 289, this Court said: “A defective condition which is harmless in itself hut which, combined with a foreseeable, fortuitous happening causes injury to a third person, constitutes contingent negligence.”
In Campbell v. Pittsburgh, 155 Pa. Superior Ct. 439, the Superior Court said wisely and justly: “We may therefore take it to be the law that although foreseeability of injury is a controlling factor in determining proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff, it is not restricted to the probability of injury in the precise manner in which the injury occurred. And if injury is foreseeable, a defendant is not necessarily relieved from liability because of other contributing causes if the defendant’s negligence is a proximate cause of the injury. It has long been the law that negligence may be a proximate cause of an injury of which it is not the sole cause.”
I would reverse and send the case back for a jury determination of the factual question involved.