Court Opinion

ID: 9770592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:11:17.115533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:18.644249
License: Public Domain

SIMS, Justice
(dissenting).
Because I believe the majority opinion completely overlooks the significance of the controlling facts, and fails to apply the settled law governing a case of this kind, I feel impelled to set forth briefly my reasons for dissenting.
I. The opinion states, and there could be no disagreement on the proposition, that appellant had the positive duty of keeping those parts of the premises to which appel-lee was invited, or could reasonably be expected to use, in a reasonably safe condition. The irrefutable and dominant fact in the case is that appellee was neither invited nor could reasonably be expected to use the entranceway within which she met with an accident.
The front porch was not lighted. Both doors were securely locked. The proper entrance was lighted, open and available. Even if we assume appellee was invited to, or could reasonably be expected to use the darkened front porch, or try to enter the building there, the locked doors could mean nothing else but that the invitation extended no further. The controlling circumstance is not that appellee had a perfect right to come upon the porch or even attempt to make her entrance through the doors which she found locked. It is that the accident happened after some third party, in no respect the agent of appellant, upon appellee’s inducement, changed the physical condition of appellant’s premises.
The place where she slipped was on or at the doorsill, which the management had positively sealed off from use by securely locking the door. She was not invited and *138could not have been expected to use the particular place where she slipped. The majority opinion suggests appellant should have posted a warning sign (perhaps in neon lights) if it did not intend for her to enter as she attempted to do. It approaches the fantastic to require appellant, for its own protection, to give special notice advising appellee not to enter this locked door hut to avail herself of the obvious entrance which had been lighted and prepared for her use. A locked door much more effectively than any sign fairly shrieks, “you are not invited to enter this way.”
By no acrobatics of reasoning can we vault the inevitable conclusion that appel-lee was not invited and could not reasonably be expected to gain access to the building through the locked door. Consequently, apppellant could not have been negligent in failing to make a minute inspection for an icy condition around the doorsill where appellee slipped.
II. Even assuming, by ignoring every single pertinent physical fact in the case, that appellee was actually invited to gain entrance through the locked door (by procuring some third party to open it) the majority refuse to apply a settled proposition of law which governs this case. That is: One in control of premises to which others are invited is required to use ordinary care to correct a dangerous condition not created by him only in the event: (1) he has actual knowledge of it; or (2) the condition has existed for such a length of time that, exercising reasonable care, he should know of it. See Restatement, Torts, § 343; Kroger Grocery & Baking Co. v. Spillman, 279 Ky. 366, 130 S.W.2d 786; and Montgomery Ward & Co. v. Hansen, 282 Ky. 188, 138 S.W.2d 357.
There is not a line of proof in the record with respect to the origin of this ice formation, nor when it developed. The freezing may have taken place five minutes before appellee arrived. On what basis therefore, since admittedly appellant’s agents did not know of the condition, could a jury possibly find that the condition had existed so long that they should have known of it? The opinion states: “There was some snow and ice on the side steps.” I find no testimony to that effect in the record. Mrs. Lutes testified that when she went out to the clubhouse in the afternoon there was some snow and ice on the steps of the side porch. Significantly this witness, who assisted appellee immediately after she had fallen in the doorway (she was on the floor, not on the porch), testified positively that there was no ice anywhere on the porch.
This was a covered porch, and no explanation is given with respect to the source of the water that formed the ice strip (if there was one). The most reasonable guess would be that the warm clubroom caused moisture to condense on the glass panel, which froze sometime after it descended to the doorsill. Anyhow, it is utterly speculative when this particular condition was created and how long it had existed.
Appellee complains that in a case of this sort it would be extremely difficult to prove how long the condition existed. While we sympathize with her predicament, the same obstacle was present in the two cases cited above. We must remember that appellant was not an insurer (although the majority decision in effect makes it one), and the burden was upon appellee to prove that appellant negligently violated a duty which it owed her. Since the latter had no duty to discover the icy condition unless it had existed long enough for appellant to have a reasonable opportunity to discover it, she must show (rather than ask the jury to speculate) some continuity of the condition. The majority opinion does not mention the above cited cases of Kroger Grocery & Baking Co. .v. Spillman, 279 Ky. 366, 130, S.W.2d 786, and Montgomery Ward & Co. v. Hansen, 282 Ky. 188, 138 S.W.2d 357, much less attempt to answer them, although both are directly in point.
III. While it might not be decisive, the opinion fails to discuss appellee’s possible contributory negligence as a matter of law. She of course, the same as appellant’s agents, knew of the weather conditions. If it is reasonable to say appellant was guilty of negligence in not discovering this particular spot of ice, it would seem that she might well be held guilty of contributory *139negligence as a matter of law when she failed to discover and avoid it while gaining entrance through a locked doorway. See Illinois Central Railroad Company v. Sanderson, 175 Ky. 11, 192 S.W. 869, L.R.A. 1917D, 890.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice CAMMACK joins in this dissent.