Court Opinion

ID: 9572207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:39:35.800134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:54.878521
License: Public Domain

Mulroney, J.
(dissenting) — I respectfully dissent. As I read the majority opinion it holds the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, fails to make out a prima-facie case of slight negligence. It goes on to hold plaintiff also failed to establish a prima-facie ease of proximate cause. I feel the evidence here sufficient to make out a prima-facie case on both issues.
I. I would hold a prima-facie ease of slight negligence was established by the evidence of wet slippery steps and the evidence of failure to assist plaintiff who was required to use them to get off of the train. We must bear in mind that here we are discussing the issue of negligence only. The question of proximate cause, which in this case means whether she did tread on the slippery steps without assistance, and slip and fall, will be dealt with in the next division. The majority often intermingles the two issues.
*676Plaintiff testifies: “I felt the stairs. They were wet and slippery.” She does not say at any place in her testimony that she felt any certain step, though it could be inferred she felt the second step, for she thinks the tip of her heel was on that step and she says she “felt the stairs” as she picked it up. The majority, though charged with the duty of construing her testimony in the light most favorable to her, holds this evidence shows no more than a wet slippery second step. Though she said the “stairs” were wet and slippery, the majority says her “meager testimony” carries no “inference to include all the steps.” The very definition of the word “stairs” is a series or combination of steps. Webster’s New International Dictionary. I am of the opinion under the facts of this case, even under the majority rigid construction of the evidence against her, plaintiff would establish a prima-faeie ease of negligence if she testified one step was wet and slippery. But it would not be too much to ask that the words she used be given an ordinary dictionary meaning'.
In Prescott & N. W. R. Co. v. Thomas, 114 Ark. 56, 167 .S.W. 486, the alleged negligence was the leaving of cantaloupe seeds on one of the steps of the train, and this was held sufficient to establish negligence. In Wisdom v. Chicago R. I. & G. Ry. Co., Tex. Civ. App., 231 S.W. 344, 345, there -was evidence that one ear step wms “old and w'orn slick” and the court held from this evidence “the jury might have reasonably inferred * * * that in furnishing a step in that condition defendant in error did not, exercise that high degree of care for her safety which it was required to exercise in furnishing her facilities to alight from its train.”
The general rule as to a prima-facie case where the negligence asserted is ice or snow on the train steps is applicable here and is well stated in the following quotation from Gegere v. Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co., 175 Minn. 96, 99, 220 N.W. 429, 430: “Since a common carrier is held to the highest degree of care in the protection of passengers while upon the journey and while entering and leaving the conveyance it would seem reasonable to hold that where the proof shows ice or snow upon the platform or steps of a railroad coach it requires the carrier *677to explain or rebut tbe inference of negligence which arises from the presence of a substance which may imperil the safety of the passengers.”
Actually the question of whether plaintiff’s testimony would warrant the inference that one or all steps were wet and slippery would go to the question of proximate cause only. The stairs would be unsafe in either instance and the only question would be whether the negligence was the proximate cause of the injury.
II. We have then a case which would permit a finding, I think, that all the steps were wet and slippery, but at least that one was. The next inquiry is whether there was a duty to assist the passenger compelled to use these stairs. The majority concludes as a matter of law there was none. All authorities hold this would be a question for the jury. We start with the proposition that there is no general duty on the part of a carrier to assist passengers alighting from trains. But the general rule is met instantly with the qualification that the duty to assist is present when circumstances indicate the passenger requires assistance. Whether the circumstances indicate assistance is required is a jury question. In other words, in this area the jury finds both the rule and whether or not it was observed. This is pointed out in Tulsa Yellow Cab, Taxi & Baggage Co. v. Salomon, 181 Okla. 519, 75 P.2d 197, where the question was as to the duty to assist a passenger over a wet slippery step. The rule of the ease on this point is well stated in the syllabus: “Where standard of duty of care is not fixed, but variable, and shifts with circumstances, it is incapable of being determined as a matter of law and must be submitted, where there is sufficient evidence, to jury for determination.”
In Olson v. Des Moines City Ry. Co., 186 Iowa 384, 391, 170 N.W. 466, 468, we stated the rule and the duty to submit to the jury as follows: “The rule, stated broadly, is that it is the duty of the carrier’s employees to assist a passenger in alighting from a car whenever the circumstances attending the passenger are such as to indicate that she requires such assistance. This may be due to the place at which she is required to alight, the unusual dangers and difficulties that attend alighting,at the place; *678or it may he due to the means which are afforded for alighting. (Italics supplied.)
The passenger’s physical condition is only one example for the application of the rule that the carrier owes a duty to assist a passenger. In the Olson ease we went on to say: “The duty arises only when the circumstances are such as, supposing him [carrier’s employee] to be a reasonably careful, prudent, and intelligent person, to suggest to him the need of such assistance. Whether the evidence suggests such need is for the jury.”
Most authorities would substitute “very careful” for “reasonably careful” in the above statement of the rule. See San Antonio Traction Co. v. Flory, 45 Tex. Civ. App. 233, 235, 100 S.W. 200, 201. In the San Antonio ease where the charged negligence was the carrier’s failure to assist a passenger over a muddy slippery step the court said: “The rule [duty to assist], upon principle, is the same whether the appearance of danger arises from the condition of the passenger, or from the condition of the means of egress.”
In Tulsa Yellow Cab, Taxi & Baggage Co. v. Salomon, 181 Okla. 519, 521, 75 P.2d 197, 199, the only element was a slippery taxicab step and the court held it was for the jury to say whether the cabdriver should have assisted the passenger. The opinion quotes with approval the following text authorities: “In 2 Hutchinson on Carriers, 1329, the author says: ‘Whether the circumstances are such in a given case as to suggest the necessity of assisting a passenger to alight is a question for the jury.’ A statement to the same effect is found in Moore on Carriers, page 682: ‘Ordinarily, whether or not assistance should be rendered by the carrier’s employee to a passenger in a given instance is a question for the jury under the circumstances of the case.’ ”
To the same effect see Wisdom v. Chicago R. I. & G. Ry. Co., Tex. Civ. App., 231 S.W. 344; Chalker v. Detroit, G. H. & M. Ry., 207 Mich. 138, 173 N.W. 532; Prescott & N. W. R. Co. v. Thomas, 114 Ark. 56, 167 S.W. 486. As stated in the San Antonio Traction Company ease, supra, the rule is the same as that applied “where the car is stopped so that the descending passenger would step into a dangerous place.” We applied the rule to such a case in McGovern v. Inter Urban Railway Co., 136 Iowa 13, 21, 111 N.W. 412, 415, 13 L. R. A., N. S., 476, 125 Am. *679St. Rep. 215, and there said the trial court was right when he “left it for them [the jury] to say whether there was negligence on the part of the defendant’s conductor in not giving plaintiff assistance.” A ease somewhat in point is Vanderbeck v. Chicago, M., St. Paul & P. Ry. Co., 210 Iowa 230, 235, 230 N.W. 390, 393, where in the course of the opinion we said: “The passenger is entitled to a safe exit at a safe place, and to such assistance as is necessary for that purpose.”
In the majority opinion it is stated: “No testimony offered by plaintiff made it reasonably apparent to the employees of the defendants that there were any unusual difficulties or dangers attendant to plaintiff’s act of alighting on this particular morning so as to require physical assistance by the defendants.” What about the evidence of the admission of the porter: “ T should have been there to help you.’ ” Surely this permits the inference that he knew the steps were wet and slippery and the duty to assist was present. In any event there was firm testimony of a wet slippery step or stairs and under the authorities cited that evidence alone rendered the question of whether there was a duty to assist a passenger using them a jury question.
From the above it will be seen the only question for the court on the duty to assist an alighting passenger is the sufficiency of the proof of circumstances — whether the proof of circumstances would permit a jury to find a duty to assist was required. Here we have it established one or all the steps were wet and slippery and the court holds as a matter of law there was no duty to assist the alighting passenger over them. In addition we have the testimony of the porter: “ T should have been there to help you.’ ” There is the evidence of the taxicab driver who took her home who testified without objection that plaintiff told him the porter said to her that “it was his fault, he should have been there to assist her off of the train, but he wasn’t.” If this is not sufficient proof of circumstances to warrant submission to a jury the question of necessity to render assistance to an alighting passenger, I fail to see how one could ever be made out. Not a ease cited in the majority opinion supports the conclusion that, as a matter of law, there was no duty to assist.
III. This brings us to the question of proximate cause which in my opinion is the only question in this case. The ma*680jority, by tailing certain statements of plaintiff out of context, concludes plaintiff fell off of the platform without treading on any of the steps. It is true that at one point when she was asked if she knew how far she fell she said she fell off of the platform, but I think you have to look at all of her testimony. Her testimony with regard to falling off of the platform is:
“Q. Do you have any idea how far you fell? A. I fell from the platform of that — I didn’t get a chance to take a step, as I remember. Q. That is, you fell from the top platform of the Pullman car ? A. Yes; put my foot down and that is the further-est I got. I started from the platform, put my foot from the platform to the first step, and that is as far as I know. I fell forward onto the ground you know, sideways.” At another point she said: “I know I grabbed the rail, and I put my foot out, and that’s all I remember until I heard a man say: ‘Don’t pick her up, she is dead.’ I don’t know what happened in that time, honestly.”
At another point she was asked: “As I understand your testimony when you went down the steps there wasn’t anybody on the platform?” Her reply was that she “saw a few men out a little ways.” (Italics supplied.)
At another place she said: “I was not running as I went down the steps. * * * I had my hand on the rail.” (Italics supplied. )
In addition to this we have the testimony of the finding of the tip of the heel of plaintiff’s shoe on one of the steps. She said she thinks this was on the second step but she could not “say positively” it was that step.
What does this evidence, construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, add up to? We know she fell down a stairs where one or all steps weie wet and slippery. We know she had grasped the handrail along the side of the stairs. She says she “started [down] from the platform” putting her “foot from the platform to the first step.” Things happened quickly then and she says “that is as far as I know” but the tip of the heel of her shoe is found on the wet slippery step. But the majority goes back often and quotes the five words “I fell from the platform” *681without her following explanation that she meant she had stepped off of the platform to the steps. The majority opinion states: “It must be conceded if plaintiff had testified she stepped upon a * * * slippery step while descending from the coach, slipped and fell, a jury question would have been generated.” Such testimony would not be “meager” according to the majority view. But plaintiff was not compelled to establish proximate cause by direct evidence. She did not testify she fell before reaching the slippery steps. She says she does not remember after putting her “foot [down] from the platform to the first step.” Proximate cause can be established wholly or partly by circumstantial evidence. A circumstance that is established is that the tip of her heel was found on one of the wet slippery steps near the top of the stairs. The majority holds that because she was unable to remember exactly what happened in the split second as she started down from the platform, and lost her footing and fell, she cannot recover. The majority brushes aside the finding the tip of her heel on the step by saying the jury could “not infer the heel tip came off at that spot * * *. Quite reasonably it could have rolled to that step.” What the majority means is that the jury would be compelled to find it broke off on the platform and rolled to that step.
Plaintiff did not have the burden of establishing her theory: that the accident was caused by her treading on wet slippery steps, beyond a reasonable doubt. We know that in some manner she lost her footing on wet slippery steps. She did not have to foreclose every other possibility. She makes out a primafacie case when she shows the thing that happened, the fall down the stairs, might well result from treading on wet slippery steps without assistance. It is idle to theorize as does the majority here that she might have “fainted, stumbled, turned her ankle, or broke the heel of her shoe as she turned to descend the steps.”
In George v. Iowa & S. W. Ry. Co., 183 Iowa 994, 998, 1000, 168 N.W. 322, 323, 324, we said plaintiff was not required “to prove either negligence or proximate cause, beyond a reasonable doubt; and, where the proven circumstances are such that different minds may reasonably draw different conclusions, or where all the lmown facts point to the negligence of the defend*682ant as the canse, then, though the evidence be wholly circumstantial, proximate cause is for a jury.”
The above case is closely in point. There the evidence only showed an unballasted roadbed and conditions generally that would make a train sway, jerk and jump, which would make it possible that one on the train would be thrown from it. In this George case the passenger was killed and there was no evidence the roughness and swaying of the train did actually cause him to fall, but we said that question was for the jury, the opinion stating: “The paramount question is whether the jury could legitimately infer, honestly using such abilities as they had, that the circumstances indicated that the condition of the track threw the decedent from the engine. "We think that question was for the jury.”
The majority indulges in that time-honored theory so often advanced by defendants in “falling” cases, that plaintiff “may have fainted”, and complains that we are not told “why the plaintiff lost consciousness.” The parties to this appeal with commendable observance of the rules of appeal stated in the record there was no need to set forth the medical testimony, said to be “sufficient to show substantial injury.” Surely it should not do violence to the majority’s concept of a permissible inference to say she was knocked unconscious by the fall. She testified when the trainmen picked her up: “I was dazed.”
The breaking off of the heel' of plaintiff’s shoe was one of the established facts of this case. Where and how she broke it off is not shown. Would it not be a legitimate inference that she broke it off when the heel slid into the back or side of the wet slippery step on which it was found? Or on the step above, which under her testimony that the “stairs” were wet and slippery was also a slippery step ? Why would a jury have to find it broke off on the platform and rolled to the second step ?
The majority says maybe she stumbled or turned her ankle while still on the platform. The possibilities for theorizing are almost endless but the majority states these theories: fainting, stumbling, turned ankle, and broken heel, while still on the platform, are “causes [that] would logically occur to reasonable men as probable” while plaintiff’s theory that she slipped on wet slippery stairs would be “idle speculation.”
*683The majority states the correct rule at the beginning of Division Y: “It must appear that the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the negligence * * But the .majority fails to apply it. The majority applies the rule that if the evidence would support two theories, one of which shows fault and a differing theory involving no negligence, then the jury’s answer would be mere conjecture. This rule is not applied where there is no evidence of a differing theory. Plaintiff’s theory of the case is that she slipped and fell on wet slippery steps. It is common knowledge that people do slip and fall on wet slippery steps. Falling down a stairway is a reasonable occurrence when the stairway is wet and slippery. She is not called upon to negative all the possible theories the defendant can think of that might have caused the mishap, other than the wet slippery steps. This distinction is pointed out clearly in the George ease, supra, where it was urged the workman might have fainted and fallen off of the train. There we said at pages 1001 and 1002 of 183 Iowa:
“But if the plaintiff shows that what the defendant did might accomplish what plaintiff suffered, it does not take the ease from the jury merely because it is possible that the act of the defendant may not have been the cause — that it is possible that something else caused the injury. If, in the case before us, there were any evidence from which a jury could find the existence of some disease which might have caused decedent to stagger and fall off the train, there would be evidence of two equally adequate causes, and the testimony might be in equipoise, as matter of law. In the ease supposed, one theory would, as matter of law, be as strong as the other. But it is only when the opposing theories have equal support as matter of law that it becomes the duty of the court to direct a verdict against the plaintiff. The ease before us makes the line of demarcation clear. The plaintiff showed that something existed which could throw a man off the train; that one who had been on the train was lying on the ground dead, with wounds and contusions upon him; and these and other things disclosed circumstances indicating that decedent came in contact with a post placed close to the track. The jury could, in reason, find that the condition of the track, the *684act of the defendant, could and did initiate the injury suffered; and placing the post where it was, completed the injury. The defendant merely responds that all this might as well have happened if some adequate illness had caused decedent to stagger, and so to fall off the train. The difficulty is, there is no evidence from which the jury could find that any disease existed — that plaintiff shows an efficient cause for the injury suffered; while the defendant theorizes upon what would be the state of the case if it, too, had shown a differing adequate cause, involving no negligence on its part. With nothing to meet the showing by plaintiff that negligence on part of defendant was adequate to cause the injury sustained, except a claim that the same injury might have resulted from an imagined cause which, if existing, would be adequate, it was for the jury to say whether the theory advanced by plaintiff was sustained by the evidence. Therefore, it was error to- direct a verdict for defendant.”
In Whetstine v. Moravec, 228 Iowa 352, 364, 291 N.W. 425, 431, many of the prior decisions of this court are reviewed respecting the quantum of proof necessary to establish proximate cause. There we held the plaintiff was not bound to “disprove every suggested cause.”
As I have stated, I think the only question that is at all close in this case is the question of proximate cause. I think plaintiff’s testimony that the “stairs * * * were wet and slippery” makes out a prima-facie case of negligence. On the question of the showing of proximate cause the majority interprets her testimony as showing she fell off of the platform before she reached the stairs. I think she explains her testimony that she fell from the platform by saying she means she “put her foot from the platform to the first step.” Perhaps she did have one foot on the platform but it fairly appears she had put the other foot down to the step. The injury was one that could reasonably flow from wet slippery stairs. I would hold a jury question was generated on the issues of negligence and proximate cause.
Hays, J., joins in this dissent.