Court Opinion

ID: 9446874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:20:20.951906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:48.795250
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I think the evidence here was sufficient -to entitle the trial court to submit the •questions of proximate cause, negligence .and contributory negligence to the jury.
As to proximate cause, the circumstances would rationally support the inference that Yager’s death was due to his ■falling into the pit, from having entered the shaft on the second floor, through -.the doors of elevator No. 2. Indeed, it seems to me that this is the only explanation to which the existing circumstances can be said reasonably to point, on how the accident occurred.
There is testimony in the record showing that, some three or four minutes before the noise of his fall into the pit was heard, Yager had had the operator of elevator No. 3 take him from the sixth floor to the second floor of the building. He ostensibly had completed his toilet-cleaning work on the sixth floor, since he had brought his cart or truck, on which he carried his supplies and utensils, into the elevator hallway with him. His foreman, who saw him waiting in front of elevator No. 3, gave this purported explanation of his actions: “Going by other days of his routine, he would go down, get his elevator No. 1, bring it up to the sixth floor and put his cart on it and work his way down the floors”.
This meant going to the second floor, since this was the place where elevators Nos. 1, 2, and 4 were required to be parked or stationed, when they were not in use, and was the only point where provision had been made for enabling the doors to be opened in access to them. While the foreman tried to convey the impression that it was Yager’s duty to use elevator No. 1, and not elevators Nos. 2 and 4, there was evidence from which the jury could find that this was not an ironclad rule but a matter of flexible convenience, as the elevators were available. Thus, his testimony contains this statement: “It was customary and part of the duties of the employees such as Harry Yager to use these elevators in pursuance of their work, and that had been going on since he had been employed there”. And other evidence showed that the employee who was directed to finish Yager’s work, after the accident, had taken and used elevator No. 2 for that purpose, just as Yager apparently had intended to do.
After Yager had gotten out of elevator No. 3 on the second floor, he was standing by the elevator shaft, with his head bent, “as if he was listening”. The charwoman, who observed him, was at *147the time entering one of the offices on the floor but came back into the hallway some seconds later, by which time Yager had disappeared. About that time, the operator of elevator No. 3 heard a noise from the shaft — -“something * * * along the unusual side”. Shortly thereafter, Yager’s foreman signalled for elevator No. 3 to come to the second floor and, according to the operator, he said: “We are going down in the basement to investigate. I think somebody has fallen in the shaft, or something”. The operator added, “He might have said ‘Harry fell down’ * *
Yager was found by the foreman and the operator lying prostrate in the pit of elevator No. 2, with the key or rod beside him which was kept on the second floor for use in opening the doors, to obtain access to the elevators when they were stationed there. The pit itself contained a door or meshed gate in front of it, which was locked, and to which Yager had no key.
The doors and shafts on the second floor, for elevators Nos. 1, 2 and 4, (which, as indicated, was the only place where provision was made for gaining access to them from the outside) contained an interlock and parking device for the elevator, which was supposed to make it impossible for the key or rod to open the elevator doors more than three or four inches, unless the elevator was located at the floor. By the admission of appellant’s experts, “If that door opened on the second floor without the elevator being there, there was something wrong with the interlock”.
It is true that appellant’s witnesses— which included some outside persons as well as its own mechanical experts- — all testified that they had not been able, after the accident, to make the doors of the shaft come open, except when the elevator was at the floor, and that the mechanical parts of the interlock and parking device were found to be in perfect working order when examined.
But against this, in addition to the circumstances of the accident, there was testimony on the part of the day foreman of the building that on the morning following the accident, after elevator No. 2 had been put into passenger service and had left the second floor, he had undertaken to use the key and had been able to open the door of the shaft with it. He stated that he reported this fact to the building manager’s office; and there is no refutation contained in the evidence as to such a report having been made by him.
On what I have set out, it seems to me that it would be competent for a jury to find that the accident had occurred from Yager’s being able to open the door into shaft No. 2, without the elevator being there. In fact, as I have suggested, this impresses as being the only rational explanation which can be made of the accident ; and neither the evidence nor the argument of appellant attempts to offer any other.
So much, then, for the question of proximate cause in general. Its more specific relationship will be made to appear in the discussion of the question of negligence following.
As to negligence, it was appellee’s theory that appellant had not exercised the necessary care to keep the mechanism of the parking device properly oiled and free from dust and lint, and that as a result, on the occasion of the accident, a rod in the mechanism, which depended upon a dropping of it being made to occur by gravity into blocking or checking position, had not fully functioned.
Appellant’s contract obligated it to “use all reasonable care to maintain the elevators in proper and safe condition”; to “periodically examine all safety devices”; and to “lubricate and adjust * * * all accessory equipment”.
It was admitted that the interlock and parking device had not been oiled and cleaned for over a year. Appellant claimed, however, that it was not necessary to do these things more than once a year, in order to keep the devices in proper working order. On the other hand, an engineer witness for appellee testified that, in order to make certain *148that the gravity functioning of the rod in the parking device would not be interfered with from a drying out of its oil or the accumulating of dust and lint in its mechanism, there should be both an oiling and a cleaning of the device every six months at least.
In the jury’s appraisal of these conflicting expert opinions, there were statements contained in the cross-examination of appellant’s experts to which the jury may well have given sidelight consideration. I quote some of them as related to both oiling and cleaning.
“They clean and oil the parking device to make sure it works properly. If it is never oiled, probably some day it would not work properly.” “Oil does dry out, and the purpose of reoiling is to restore the oil to the original condition and permit these parts to work the right way.” “With respect to this locking or parking device, if any of these four joints bind enough to keep that rod up, you can open that door. For the rod to function those four joints must be free enough to allow that rod to drop.” As to dirt and lint— “It would have to be quite a little bit of lint or something else that could slip through there that would gradually accumulate that would prevent that (rod) from going down all the way.”
According to the evidence, the housing on the gravity-rod device contained a slot, through which it would be possible for dust and lint cumulatively to sift and become deposited. Beyond such accumulation as would normally thus occur through the course of over a year in the elevator shaft of a downtown office building, there was entitled to be taken into account the further fact that the parking-device mechanism on the second floor had on that very day been subjected to such special stirring up and dropping of lint and dust as could be occasioned by a general vacuuming and cleaning of the shaft from the top floor of the building down to and including the third floor. Appellant’s crew had that evening ceased its activities at the third floor, intending to go on with a cleaning of the shaft and the mechanisms at the second floor the following morning.
Since, as I have stated, the accident was capable, on its existing circumstances, of being rationally accounted for or explained only on the basis that the decedent had been able to open the elevator door on the second floor with the key to the locking and parking device, and since, according to the evidence, he would not have been able to do so if the gravity rod had functioned properly so as to have dropped into regular blocking or checking position, I think the jury could reasonably conclude and find that the gravity rod had failed to properly function and operate on the occasion of the accident, as well as at the time of the experiment in which the day foreman engaged on the morning following. And in the light of the evidence which I have set out, as well as on the basis of the common experience which most men would have as to such a simple mechanical principle and operation as was involved in the gravity-rod device, it seems to me that the jury could further regard it as being naturally probable that the oiling and dust-accumulation situation had been responsible for or had contributed to the failure of the rod to have dropped into full blocking or checking position. Whether the sticking or non-dropping of the gravity rod from these elements was of such chance occurrence (it might perhaps correct itself entirely on a subsequent lifting or manipulation) as to make what appellant had done or failed to do in relation to the factors of oiling and dust-accumulation constitute lack of due care or negligence under all the circumstances and in relation to the conflicting expert testimony would in my judgment be a question for the jury.
As to contributory negligence, I think that this question too was necessarily for the jury. As against the fact that the door had been able to be opened and that the decedent would have the right to believe that this could not occur unless the elevator was at the floor, I do not believe that the general sign, “Warning —Be Sure Car Is Here Before Entering”, *149would require, as a matter of ordinary-human conduct, that he be held to have been guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law. The evaluation of that question — and particularly in its relation to the presumption of care attendant upon his death — would seem to me clearly to be for the jury. This is true also as to any other arguable elements in the situation.
I think the judgment is entitled to be •affirmed.