Court Opinion

ID: 9584500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:49:04.487011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:08:04.401549
License: Public Domain

Lewis, Chief Justice
(dissenting) :
This action was brought by appellant to recover for personal injuries sustained by her when she fell on an interior stairway of the Federal Land Bank of Florence and the Pee Dee Production Credit Association office building in Florence where she worked. She alleged that her injuries resulted from the negligent, reckless, and wilful acts of respondent in *102partially completing the installation of carpeting on the stairway and leaving it in such dangerous condition as to cause the most careful user of the stairway to fall. The lower court concluded that appellant was barred of recovery by her own contributory negligence and recklessness as a matter of law and granted respondents’ motion for summary judgment, from which appellant has prosecuted this appeal.
In 1976 Production Credit Association and the Federal Land Bank engaged respondents to install the carpet in their newly constructed two-story building. The building was occupied on February 7, 1976 and had been completed except for the laying of the carpet on the stairway. The carpeting had been completed on the second floor to the top of the stairway, where the carpet was cut so as to extend over the floor and hang down. Respondents failed to anchor this flap and left it hanging loose and unattached.
There was an elevator between the two floors of the building but the employees also used the stairway which was provided for their use.
The partially and defectively installed carpet at the head of the stairway was allowed to remain in this condition by respondents from February 7 through March 10, although they were repeatedly warned that the users of the stairway often tripped over the loose carpet.
This record conclusively shows that the respondents were guilty, as a matter of law, of reckless, wilful, and wanton conduct in creating and leaving the dangerous condition in the partially installed carpet. The question at issue then is whether on a motion for summary judgment the record conclusively shows that appellant was guilty of contributory recklessness and wilfulness as a matter of law. This record does not so show.
It is reasonably inferable that appellant and the other employees were expected to use the stairway, as well as the elevator, in going from one floor of the building to the other. The continued necessity to pass over the dangerous condi*103tion was calculated at some point in time to reduce the degree of negligence of appellant in exposing herself to the danger. And, as pointed out by appellant, the culpability of respondents, knowing of the necessity of appellant to use the stairway, would increase with the long persistent failure to reduce the hazard to which they had consciously exposed the employees using the building.
Much reliance is placed, in summarily barring appellant of recovery, upon the fact that she admitted knowledge of the hazard which caused her to fall. She also stated in her deposition : “. . . I was adjusted to being careful, to the hanging over carpet, and we were looking forward every day to the carpet being fixed. You adjust after a while when you know something is hazardous.” In using the stairway on the occasion in question, as she was expected to do by her employer, she stated that, in passing over the dangerous condition created and permitted to remain by respondents, she exercised caution but, for some reason, she tripped and fell.
Under these circumstances, whether appellant was guilty of contributory negligence or contributory recklessness was an issue for the jury to determine and cannot be properly determined on a motion for summary judgment. If appellant was guilty of only contributory negligence, she would not be barred of recovery in view of the undisputed reckless conduct of respondents.
I would reverse the judgment and remand for a trial of the issues.
Littlejohn, J., concurs.