Court Opinion

ID: 9712422
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:53:33.108896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:12.070010
License: Public Domain

FERREN, Associate Judge,
with whom NEWMAN, Chief Judge, joins, concurring:
I concur fully in Judge PRYOR’s opinion for the court but write to emphasize one point.
Central to the thesis of our dissenting colleagues is their understanding of the texture of the temporary walkway. They characterize it as a “compound” or “aggre*657gate compound or “gravel compound, * implying a hard surface that, as a matter of law, cannot manifest negligence. While appellant herself referred to “little rocks” and “gravel and stuff that was in the sand,” every one of the government’s own witnesses, including the bricklayer and correctional officers, exclusively characterized it as a 24-square-foot area, brick high, filled with “sand” (although one government witness also referred to “rubbish” there). Thus, the testimony taken as a whole is open to a reasonable inference that the area primarily was sand filled and that the surface was soft, given the testimony of government witnesses that the area regularly had to be tamped down. It follows that the jury reasonably could find negligence, in that a person who must walk from a brick surface to one primarily filled with sand easily could lose her footing or trip against the brick at the end.

 Judge NEBEKER, for example, states with reference to the testimony of Sergeant Harold S. Nelson: “At the beginning of his shift, he had noticed the area filled with the gravel compound. He testified that it was ‘up to the surface of the remaining bricks and the borders and it was packed.’ ” Post at 661 (emphasis added). Actually, Sergeant Nelson testified as follows: “At that time, I had noticed that the walkway — that bricks had been taken up out of the walkway and sand had been replaced up to the surface of the remaining bricks and the borders and it was packed.” [Nov. 21, 1979 transcript at 65 (emphasis added).]