Court Opinion

ID: 9773508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:47:56.422576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:54.560013
License: Public Domain

CONKLING, Judge
(dissenting).
Believing that the trial court should have given instruction D, which is quoted in paragraph ten of the principal opinion prepared by Commissioner LOZIER, I respectfully dissent.
Examination of the transcript of the record and the exhibits filed discloses that this plaintiff elevator operator himself unlocked and opened this elevator door; that he “got the door all the way open” and without making any use of his eyes or other senses to determine whether the elevator was at his floor he turned his back to the open door of the unoccupied and dangerous elevator shaft. After he had answered an inquiry he stepped backward “just a matter of inches” into the open elevator shaft. Plaintiff was one of the operators of that elevator. He knew there was a light in the elevator, and he had just come up in that elevator less than a minute before he fell. He testified that he did not recall whether he realized there was no light there when he opened the elevator door. Under the circumstances here I think plaintiff was negligent as a matter of law. O’Dell v. Dean, 356 Mo. 861, 204 S.W.2d 248, and cases there cited; Senseney v. Landay Real Estate Co., 345 Mo. 128, 131 S.W.2d 595, and cases there cited; Sodomka v. Cudahy Packing Co., 101 Neb. 446, 163 N.W. 809; F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Davis, 41 F.2d 342; Cox v. Bondurant, 220 Mo.App. 948, 7 S.W.2d 403.
In Senseney v. Landay Real Estate Co., supra (345 Mo. 128, 131 S.W.2d 598], in which case the plaintiff had himself opened the elevator door with a key similar to the one used by Votrain in the instant case, and then had walked into the open elevator shaft, in ruling Senseney was negligent as a matter of law, this Court said that “a closed elevator door is a warning to look before entering”. [Emphasis supplied.]
It is my opinion that neither custom, practice, rule, possession of the key, distraction of attention nor any of the other matters suggested in paragraph twelve of the principal opinion, nor any other matters not suggested, either singly or in combination, were or could be any assurance that the elevator in that shaft was then at that particular floor. Nature gave man eyes with which to see; and it is my opinion that one who has eyes should not be permitted to thus excuse his confessed failure to use them under these circumstances.
Plaintiff did not even recall whether he realized that there was no light in the shaft when he opened the door. The very absence of light when he opened those doors warned him there was no elevator there. It was his affirmative duty to see and to take note of what he saw. In O’Dell v. Dean, supra, in the ruling that it was negligence as a matter of law to open an elevator door and then step inte an open elevator shaft, we approved the following language from Central Publishing House of Reformed Church in United States v. Flury, 25 Ohio App. 214, 157 N.E. 794, 798:
“Darkness is nature’s own warning to arouse the natural instinct of self-protection, the first law of nature. Indifference to such an instinct is a clear violation of a fundamental physical law, and should be, under circumstances like those of the instant case, more impressive and convincing than a sign ‘Danger,’ nailed on the door. Darkness was a danger in the instant case that stood gaunt and menacing in front of the eyes of the plaintiff, and under such circumstances as appear in *849this record to enter the (elevator) shaft is, in our judgment, such contributory negligence as should prevent a recovery in law.”
Our attention has not been directed to a case, and my research has not revealed one, where recovery was allowed to even an invitee who fell into an elevator shaft which plaintiff knew to be such a shaft, and which had thereon a guard or door, and where the person who fell opened the door and fell therein without any precaution to find out if the elevator was there. And in cases which have presented facts similar to this case, or to the O’Dell case, or to the Senseney case, the courts seem to have uniformly ruled that such person was negligent as a matter of law.
I cannot escape the conclusion that Vo-train was guilty of negligence as a matter of law, and that defendant, even in this Federal Employers Liability case, was entitled to have the jury so instructed. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. Co. v. Ballard, 5 Cir., 108 F.2d 768.
Even if it be conceded that defendant was negligent in that Thomas handed the key to plaintiff and thereafter moved the elevator, it was neither foreseeable therefrom nor was it the natural and probable consequence of Thomas’ act that plaintiff would open the door into the shaft, fail to observe the absence of the elevator and then step either backward or forward into the open shaft. It is my view that under the instant circumstances, plaintiff’s negligent act of stepping into the open elevator shaft was the independent, intervening and efficient sole cause of his injuries, a personal act of plaintiff over which defendant had no control whatever, and one which Thomas had no reason whatever to anticipate, and without the intervention of which plaintiff would not have been injured. I do not believe that it should be held that, in law, any act of Thomas contributed in whole or in part to cause plaintiff’s injuries.
Instruction D told the jury, as I think the jury should have been told, that plaintiff was negligent; and further instructed them that if plaintiff’s negligence was the “sole cause of his fall * * * and that defendant was not negligent, as outlined in other instructions,” then plaintiff could not recover. I think it is clear that plaintiff was grossly negligent, and if plaintiff’s negligence was the sole cause of his injuries (and I think it was) and if defendant was not negligent as submitted, then it is my view that a finding by the jury of those two last named facts was a proper basis of a verdict for defendant.
I think that instruction D was a proper one, and that its refusal was reversible error.
For the above reasons I respectfully dissent.
Adopted as opinion of the court en banc.
HYDE, HOLLINGSWORTH, DALTON and LEEDY, JJ., and BENNICK and CAVE, Special Judges, concur.
CONKLING, C. J., dissents in opinion filed.