Court Opinion

ID: 9736359
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:53:43.304614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:06.167295
License: Public Domain

Hammond, C. J.,
dissenting:
If the rule that any negligence, however slight, on the part of a plaintiff will bar his recovery has outlived its usefulness, it should be modified or abolished by the legislature, but as long as it remains in force (even if only theoretically) it should be applied evenly. I do not think it was in this case.
The plaintiff knew that laundry room floors from time to time may well be wet. Indeed, she complained in her testimony that the water she says caused her to fall had not run down into the drain that had been put in the floor to permit spilled water to run off, acknowledging thus that often there would be water on the laundry room floor that should have been drained off.
The plaintiff said she was well acquainted with the laundry room and its floor and bright lighting. At least two other persons said they had seen water on the floor from a standing position, one a fellow tenant and friend, and the other the apartment house employee. The plain*380tiff will not be heard to say she looked and did not see because she could have seen had she looked. She barely says, even under pressing leading questions, that she even looked. Most of her testimony was “guessing.” She was asked: “* * * where [were] you looking when you looked into the laundry room.” Her answer was: “Ahead of me on the floor, I guess.” She was asked: “was there anything to obscure your vision of the water on the floor.” The best she could do was to answer: “I don’t know.”
Obviously she did not look when she went into a familiar, well lighted place which she knew might have water on the floor, water which she could have seen if she had looked and which she did not see because she did not look. She was the author of her own misfortune and, assuming primary negligence, which is extremely doubtful, cannot recover because she was contributorily negligent as a matter of law.
I would affirm.