Court Opinion

ID: 9657547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:30:07.736967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:05:49.501842
License: Public Domain

Adams, J.
(dissenting). Chief Judge LesiNSki in his dissenting opinion in Serinto v. Borman Food Stores, 3 Mich App 183, has analyzed the total fact situation in this case and the controlling principle of law regarding the sufficiency of evidence as set forth in Sparks v. Luplow (1963), 372 Mich 198, 202. I agree with his opinion.
. This Court does not have the benefit of Catherine Serinto’s appearance on the witness stand by means of which to judge her testimony. When the accident occurred Mrs. Sertino was 32 years of, age. *648The acuity of her hearing, not apparent on the record before us, would be readily apparent to the jury. Her alertness to activities about her could also be judged by the jury. Whatever the jurors’ observations of her hearing and her mental alertness may have been, certainly those observations were proper to their decision as well as the other relevant facts— that the accident occurred on Good Friday morning when the store was almost empty of customers, that she did not notice any customers in the aisleway in which she fell, that she did not observe any stock boys on the floor, that she was in the store for some 45 to 50 minutes and heard no sound of breaking glass, and, finally, that a cashier had a view of the aisle. In Sparks, supra, a unanimous Court upheld a verdict for the plaintiff. This Court stated (pp 202, 203):
“Might reasonable minds differ as to whether defendant Kresge Company was guilty of negligence in not seeing and removing the banana from the floor prior to plaintiff’s fall, in view of the store manager’s testimony that he had been down the aisle several times that afternoon, the last time approximately 5 minutes before the accident, and in view of his testimony that if the janitor had performed his sweeping duties in the usual manner, the floor would have been swept some time within a half hour before the accident? Might not reasonable minds infer the failure' to sweep, together with the failure on the part of the store manager and defendant Lup-low to see the banana, which was admittedly there and may have been there long enough for them to have found it in the exercise of ordinary care, constituted negligence?”.
Applied to this case, the above quotation from Sparks might be paraphrased somewhat as follows:
Might reasonable minds differ as to whether defendant Borman Food Stores Company was guilty *649of negligence in not seeing and removing tlie mayonnaise from the floor prior to plaintiff’s fall, in view of Mrs. Serinto’s testimony that she heard no sound of breaking glass during the 45 or 50 minutes she was in the store, that the cashier had a view of the aisle where the mayonnaise was spilled, and that Mrs. Serinto observed no customers in the aisle? Might not reasonable minds infer that the failure on the part of the cashier to see the mayonnaise, which was admittedly there and may have been there long enough to have been found in the exercise of ordinary care, or the failure on the part of stock boys to patrol the aisles, constituted negligence ?
The negative evidence in this case is only a part of the total facts. Those facts — sufficient to satisfy the trial judge — viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, are as favorable to these plaintiffs as were the facts in Sparks, in fact more so, because (unlike the silent- — no noise when falling — banana in Sparks), the jars of mayonnaise, a product for sale (in Sparks the banana was not), were known to be there by defendant’s employees and would make a noise when falling on a hard floor. It was foreseeable that such merchandise, in glass containers, might become broken.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals should be reversed and the judgment of the circuit court affirmed.
T. M. KavaNagh, J., concurred with Adams, J.