Court Opinion

ID: 9850320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:55:21.041733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:35.213785
License: Public Domain

Bussey, Justice
(dissenting) :
The principles of law governing liability in a case of this kind are reasonably well settled, not only in this state, but in most other jurisdictions. Difficulty is oft encountered, however, in the application of these principles to the facts and circumstances of a particular case.
There is, admittedly, no direct evidence as to precisely how, or when, the rice, which caused the injury to the plaintiff, fell upon defendant’s floor, but it is well settled in this state that, while the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is not recognized, negligence may, nevertheless, be proved by circumstantial evidence. When liability of a defendant, if any, is predicated upon constructive notice, as is the case here, the instances are, indeed, rare in which a plaintiff can prove constructive notice by other than circumstantial evidence, regardless of how grossly negligent the storekeeper may have been.
The pivotal question here is whether there was evidence from which the jury might reasonably infer that the defendant, by the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have known of the hazard on the floor which caused the injury to the plaintiff. In determining this question, it is elementary that all of the evidence and the inferences reasonably deducible therefrom have to be viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Certain additional facts and reasonable inferences therefrom should be stated in such light.
*124As far as the record discloses, the defendant, at the time, had on duty only two employees who had any duties to perform, or reason to be, in the particular area of the store; one being the assistant manager, Boykin, and the other being the produce manager, Ott. The cashier’s duties were naturally at the front of the store, and Garrick, the manager of the meat market, worked behind a counter at the rear of the store and the adjacent storage areas.
The rice upon the floor, whenever and however it got there, was not placed there by plaintiff, and was of sufficient quantity that it had to be swept up after the accident. Boykin, the assistant manager, testified that Wednesday was a “slack day”; that he walked down the particular aisle before the store opened that morning and several times in the course of the day, but that he had no recollection of doing so at any specific time. He admitted that due to the coloring of the floor he could have passed the rice without seeing it. With respect to any customer traffic in the store that particular morning, Ott, the produce manager, testified that it was, “Well, about the quietest, one of the quietest, yes, sir.” Wednesday morning being a very quiet one, a part of the time of the personnel was devoted to making preparations for Thursday, the first big day of the weekend trade.
Ott was in immediate charge of and had the duty of keeping clear the area where plaintiff was injured. While he testified that he inspected or patrolled such every ten or fifteen minutes, examining the floor like a hawk, and that he was employed in the same capacity, he did not on the stand know either the color or design of the floor. He wore bifocal glasses, but did not claim to be color blind. At the time of the injury, plaintiff was the only person in that particular area of the store. Boykin’s whereabouts at the moment is not disclosed, but Ott was in the storage room at the rear. Plaintiff’s fall made a terrific noise and the only people who came to her rescue were first Ott and Boykin, Ott coming from the rear and Boykin from some other part of the store.
*125The plaintiff had entered the store a substantial period of time before her fall, and prior thereto had shopped for and placed in her pushcart eight or ten packages. There is no suggestion in the record that there were any other customers in the store at the time of the fall, for that matter, during the entire period of time that plaintiff was in the store.
In overruling the defendant’s motion for a nonsuit, the trial judge was of the view, and I agree, that it could be reasonably inferred from the evidence that there were no other customers in the store during the whole time that the plaintiff was there, and that under all of the circumstances it was a jury issue as to whether the rice had been there for a sufficient length of time for the defendant, in the exercise of reasonable care, to have discovered it.
In an announced effort to induce the trial judge to arrive at a different ruling on the later motion for a directed-verdict by the defendant, testimony was adduced from the manager of the meat market to the effect that some one hundred to one hundred fifty customers came into the store on that particular morning during the five hour period it was open. He did not testify, however, that any customers were in the store at the time of, or shortly before, the accident. An analysis of his uncorroborated testimony would indicate that his estimate was a pure belated guess, and the trial judge and the jury were warranted in giving it little weight or effect.
Research discloses to the writer no case factually in point with the instant case. A few, but not nearly all, of the many cases dealing with the sufficiency of evidence to give rise to a reasonable inference of constructive notice are collected in an annotation in 61 A. L. R. (2d) 129. Certain others are contained in the footnotes to the 3d Ed. of Prosser on Torts, 216, notes 86, 87. In Moore v. Ameriran Stores, (1936) 169 Md. 541, 182 A., 436, 440, the court, with respect to constructive notice, said,
*126“What will amount to sufficient time depends upon the circumstances of the particular case, and involves consideration of the nature of the danger, the number of persons likely to be affected by it, the diligence required to discover or prevent it, the opportunities and means of knowledge, the foresight which a person of ordinary care and prudence would be expected to exercise under the circumstances, and the foreseeable consequences of the conditions.”
In the fairly recent case of Garrett v. National Tea Co., 12 Ill. (2d) 567, 147 N. E. (2d) 367 (1958), the court said,
“There is no arbitrary rule as to the length of time an obstruction must be on the floor before constructive knowledge will be presumed.”
The basic rule of liability appears to be the same in Illinois as it is in this and most other jurisdictions, and under the circumstances of the particular case, the court held that there was sufficient evidence to support a reasonable inference of constructive notice. There, as here, the injury occurred on a slack day, with respect to which the court said,
“There was, therefore, a better opportunity for defendant’s employees to exercise ordinary care to discover and remove the obstruction in question.”
The time element involved in that case was, at least inferentially, less than the time involved in the instant case. There the obstacle was near the exit, but was not there when the injured customer entered the store. She, just as the plaintiff here, was in the store long enough to select a cart, wheel it about through the shopping area, and complete the selection of her purchases. Unlike the instant case, the customer had already been checked out and paid for her groceries.
In Hudson v. F. W. Woolworth Co., (1931) 275 Mass. 469, 176 N. E. 188, there was only circumstantial evidence as to constructive notice of a piece of candy on the floor of the store, which caused the injury. In holding such sufficient, the court commented,
*127“There was something on which to base a conclusion that the candy had not been dropped a moment before by a customer,”
In the instant case it rather clearly appears that the rice had not been dropped a moment before by a customer. It was only natural, under the circumstances, that the plaintiff was unable to prove the precise moment at which the rice reached the floor of the defendant, and such precise moment is a matter of speculation. Under all of the circumstances, however, viewed favorably to the plaintiff, as we must do, no speculation is involved in arriving at the logical, reasonable inference from the evidence that the injury producing rice had been upon the floor for quite a substantial period of time prior to the injury. The evidence was sufficient to warrant the jury in so finding, and it was for the jury to determine whether, under all of the disclosed circumstances, the defendant, in the exercise of ordinary care and the discharge of its duty to plaintiff, should have discovered and remedied the hazard. I would affirm the judgment of the lower court.
Lewis, J., concurs.