Court Opinion

ID: 9725282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:38:47.172157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:13.401692
License: Public Domain

Thompson, J.
(dissenting) — It is elementary that the burden is upon the plaintiff who, seeks to recover damages for personal injuries claimed to have resulted from the negligence of the defendant, to make a prima facie showing sufficient to require submission to the jury. But if he does not make such a showing, the court should not hesitate to so hold. Álthough everyone will agree that the mere happening of an injury is not in itself sufficient to make a jury question, I fear we are approaching that result. We should not seek strained and implausible reasons for leaving the decision to the trier of the facts, nor should we ignore the record in order to accomplish this result.
*509With all due respect to the majority opinion, I suggest that is what it does in tbe ease at bar. As the majority points out, the plaintiff did not see fit to say in his pleadings what status he occupied while assisting his brother in the corn shelling operation when he was injured; whether he was an. employee, or agent, or joint adventurer, or invitee. However, the majority charitably, perhaps, says the record sufficiently shows he was an invitee, and reasons the case accordingly. This is also the status urged by the plaintiff in his brief in this court. Accepting this, arguendo, I think the trial court properly held that there was no sufficient showing of defendant’s negligence to permit submission to the jury.
I. The majority properly states the rule governing the duty owed by the owner or occupier of premises to an invitee. He owes the duty of keeping his premises reasonably safe and free from dangers that are not obvious or which are not reasonably apparent, or which in the exercise of reasonable care for his own safety are not known to the invitee; and if such dangers exist it is his duty to warn of them. “The duty owed by the inviter is to those, and to those only, who do not know, or, in the exercise of reasonable care for their own safety, have no reasonable means of knowing, of defects or dangers.” Atherton v. Hoenig’s Grocery, 249 Iowa 50, 55, 86 N.W.2d 252, 255. We quoted this with approval in Corrigan v. Younker Bros., 252 Iowa 1169, 1175, 110 N.W.2d 246, 250.
At this point I part company with the majority. As the plaintiff performed his work of shovelling the corn into the dragline, he came to the place where the horizontal tunnel was blocked because it was crushed in from the top. The majority says: “He [the plaintiff] did not know how the vent in defendant’s crib was installed.” This, statement is not supported by the record. It must be remembered that plaintiff’s specifications of negligence, fairly interpreted, all go to the allegations that the horizontal tunnels should have been overlapped at the ends, and the vertical tunnel was improperly installed because it rested upon the horizontal tunnel. Presumably it is contended the vertical tunnel should have rested on the floor. There is no specification which by any fair reading can be construed to be an *510allegation that the vertical tunnel should have been properly braced. The discussion as to binder twine is beyond the specifications of negligence, and amounts to* reading into them something that is not there.
I turn then to the plaintiff’s own testimony. It shows clearly that the whole situation was directly in front of him when he made his effort to raise the crushed mesh of the horizontal tunnel to permit the dragline to be pushed farther into it. ■ He said: “My recollection is also that the column of vertical tunnels were [sic] sitting down solid on the crushed down bottom horizontal tunnel.”
So the plaintiff knew that the vertical tunnel was rested on the horizontal tunnel; he so states. There is no showing that an overlapping of the ends of the sections of the horizontal tunnel would have prevented the crushing that resulted; but, in .any event, the plaintiff had helped to remove at least one other section ; he so testified. He must have seen that the ends there were not overlapped, and his testimony shows that he observed the place where the vertical tunnel sat on the horizontal tunnel, and if he could see that he could see that the horizontal tunnel was not overlapped.
The entire situation was before the plaintiff, and it does not require an expert to know that there is a danger from sliding or falling corn when it is being removed as was done here. The defects were as well known, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have been as well known, to the plaintiff as to the defendant. Indeed, the plaintiff, who was engaged in the work, in moving the corn which changed with each shovelful taken out, had better means of knowing of possible dangers than the defendant, who was not in the crib.
I would affirm the trial court.
PeteRSON and Stuart, JJ., join in this dissent.