Court Opinion

ID: 9455820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:34:35.481977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:45.061700
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I think the issues of negligence and contributory negligence present in this case required a jury verdict. I would accordingly hold that the motion for directed verdict was improvidently granted and reverse.
Several jury questions as to the appellees’ negligence vel non were present. Leaving aside the question of the correctness of the exclusion from evidence of the Rules and Regulations of The Florida State Hotel and Restaurant Commission, which destroyed the accompanying claim of negligence arising from failure to comply with the rules and regulations in *61the construction of the stairway, I think that the evidence allowed to go to the jury raised a serious jury question as to faulty design of the stairway, rendering it slippery when wet, and a related question of negligence in not providing an inside stairway for use in inclement weather.
A further jury question was involved in the condition of the step on which appellant slipped, the third step from the bottom of the stairway. Mr. Dvorak could only testify as to the condition of this step six months after the accident, but the jury had a right to determine whether that condition existed at the time of the accident and whether it was the (or a) proximate cause of Mr. Dvorak’s slipping and falling. If at the time of the fall the concrete surface of the critical step was below the level of its metal rim so as to form a shallow catch-basin which contained water and presented a wet and slippery surface to the foot of an unwary person descending the stairway, the jury should have been permitted to pass on the questions of negligence in (a) the construction and (b) the maintenance of the step in such a dangerous condition.
As to the trial court’s conclusion that contributory negligence was present as a matter of law, I am simply at a loss to understand the holding or the majority’s approval of it. I would think that Mr. Dvorak’s testimony as to his careful method of descending the stairway would clearly make such a holding impermissible and would require submission of the issue of contributory negligence along with those of negligence for the jury’s determination.
What was said by the Supreme Court of Florida in Stirling v. Sapp, Fla.1969, 229 So.2d 850, 852, and the other Florida cases cited by the majority seems to me to preclude, not to support, the majority’s holding. Here the evidence was not susceptible merely to a single inference, rather a jury was required to resolve conflicting inferences. I think Florida substantive law has been misconstrued by the majority, and also that they have misapplied the directed verdict test adopted by us in Boeing v. Shipman, 5 Cir. 1969, 411 F.2d 365.
With deference, I dissent.