Court Opinion

ID: 9626394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:10:44.084649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:26.671156
License: Public Domain

*604HENDRICKS, District Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent.
The law as now declared by the main opinion of the Court overrules all former cases1 of this Court which placed upon the individual the duty of using ordinary care and caution for his own safety and protection from hazards readily discernible while upon the property occupied by another.
Decreeing such to be the law in effect places an undue expense burden on the business occupier of property by subjecting him to defend damage suits by the malingerers and the star-gazing nosey-wanderers and/or maintaining expensive protective measures against them. All of such unnecessary expense must ultimately fall upon the members of organized society at a time when the social group is demanding that the individual assume his full responsibilities for self-protection in order that a high standard of living may be maintained.
The storekeeper should not be required to render safe for his customers’ use parts of his store reserved for the use of himself and his employees.
There are some significant facts that should be kept in mind in deciding this case:
1) The appellant was a frequent visitor to this neighborhood store and has been a salesman and a man about town for 20 years, and therefore well acquainted with the liquor laws pertaining to sale of liquor;
2) He admits that once he was ordered out from behind the prescription counter, respondent says he had ordered appellant out from behind the prescription counter several times; by the exercise of common intelligence he would have *605known that articles on top of a seven-foot shelf back of the liquor counter were there for display purposes only;
3) That it was a holiday, Armistice Day, and the liquor counter was closed to the public;
4) That at the entrance to back of the liquor counter was a large sign “No Admittance, Employees Only”;
5) That the two-foot hole in the floor was 12 to 15 feet from where appellant entered back of the counter;
6) That the lighting expert testified that a “gadget” test proved that the store lighting system made the floor as light as day; the appellant said as he remembered it the floor was shadowy;
7) It must be assumed that a light was on in the basement because when Mrs. Cannon stepped over to the shaft she saw and described his position on the basement floor; because of the basement light the hole would have been all the more visible to appellant;
8) By observing the pictures of the shelf with articles displayed thereon together with Mrs. Cannon’s testimony, the appellant was not near the hole in the floor when he replaced the display card;
9) That Mrs. Cannon had a right to assume that appellant had seen the hole and would protect himself from the hazard, she had the further right to assume that he would move in only one direction and that would be toward the entrance and move away from the hole, and that he would have no more difficulty in replacing the card than he had in getting it;
10) Another fact that must be stressed is that a man, the size of appellant could not fall through a two-foot hole by stepping into it one foot at a time. Had he stepped into it backward as he testified, one leg would have been out and the spread of his arms would have held him up; if he had stepped into the hole sideways as Mrs. Cannon pre*606sumed, because she did not see him go through the hole, she was looking in another direction, waiting to usher him out sans a bottle of liquor, one leg would have been out and he wouldn’t have fallen through. To get down through the hole, he had to jump into it with both feet.
The appellant testified at the trial that he told the clerk he wanted a Fine-Line Pencil and she directed him to the card on the shelf back of the liquor counter and allowed him back there. This story was abandoned by his counsel, I think quite properly, and they based their brief on the theory that originally he was a trespasser but that he became an invitee when the clerk approached him and asked him if she could serve him. The main opinion of the Court adopts the theory of appellant’s brief and endeavors to show that the clerk’s approach and her courteous inquiry invoked some hocus pocus of the law which changed appellant’s status ab initio from entrance upon the forbidden territory.
True, in Knox v. Snow, 119 Utah 222, 229 P. 2d 874, 876, the Court did point out, merely as a matter of adding further emphasis to that case, the fact that there were other hazards in the garage. But Justice Latimer quoted with emphasis from the rule regarding contributory negligence as stated on page 861 of 38 Am. Jurisprudence,
“a plaintiff will not be held to have been guilty of contributory negligence if it appears that he had no knowledge or means of knowledge of the danger, and conversely, he will be deemed to have been guilty if it is shown that he knew or reasonably should have known of the peril and might have avoided it by the exercise of ordinary ca/re * * *»
Justice Latimer made it plain that if the hazard is discernible with the exercise of reasonable care, failure to see it would be negligence; he said “A reasonable person makes some observations along the path he chooses to follow.”
Certainly it cannot be said that this hole in the floor could not have been observed by the appellant had he made some observation in front of him where he was walking.
*607In the case of Mingus v. Olsson, 114 Utah 505, 201 P. 2d 495, this court held that deceased was guilty of contributory-negligence as a matter of law which precluded recovery because he had failed to look to see if there was. a vehicle approaching and walked into the path of an oncoming auto. In the case of Bird v. Clover Leaf-Harris. Dairy, 102 Utah 330, 125 P. 2d 797, 799, this court held that the property occupier owes no duty to a trespasser nor a licensee “except that of refraining from committing active negligence”. The only duty Mrs. Cannon owed the appellant was to refrain from pushing him down the hole. These cases should not be overruled by innuendo.
Chief Justice WOLFE, quotes as a basis for his opinion the rule set forth in Section 337 of the Restatement of the Law of Torts, to wit:
“A possessor of land who maintains thereon an artificial condition which involves a risk of death or serious bodily harm to persons coming in contact therewith, is subject to liability for bodily harm caused to trespassers by his failure to exercise reasonable care to warn them thereof if
“(a) the possessor knows or, from facts within his knowledge, should know of their presence in dangerous proximity to the artificial condition, and
“ (b) the condition is of such a nature that he has reason to believe that the trespasser will not discover it or realize the risk involved therein.”
It takes a great deal of the imagination to find that a dumb-waiter shaft 15 feet from the entrance to back of the counter, where only employees are allowed, readily discernible to any one who looks, any more of an artificial condition than a grease pit readily discernible to any one who looks. Nor does the fact of the case fall under (a) alone or in conjunction with (b) as should be. For certainly no person with ordinary intelligence could have failed to see the shaft had he used ordinary care for his own safety and made some observation along the path in front of him. Nor could any jury be presumed to find that after a sane man saw the hole through the floor that he would not rea*608lize the danger and risk therein, and having seen the hole and realized the danger therein would not act for his own safety.
I do not believe that it would be good law to hold that the clerk by approaching appellant and saying “May I serve you” waved some magic wand of the law that ab initio changed appellant’s status from that of a trespasser or licensee to that of an invitee or relieved him of his present or antecedent duty to look ahead of him and protect himself from any hazards that were readily discernible in his pathway. Nor can it be logically argued either that Mrs. Cannon’s approach coupled with her words sprayed him with any legalistic detergent that cleansed him from antecedent and present negligence, to wit: His failure to use ordinary care for his own safety by looking where he was going and protecting himself from the hazards of the hole in the floor that he could have seen had he looked.
It is unnecessary to spend any time in answering or conjecturing what the appellant’s original intention or status was when he went behind the liquor counter; how or why he jumped through the hole; or in arguing whether we should, or do, overrule former cases; or declare a new refinement of the law for the future benefit of malingerers and the star-gazing nosey-wanderer. Nor need we consider for a moment whether the Court’s instruction No. 9 was correct because in this case as a matter of law the appellant was negligent. He failed to use ordinary caution in observing where he was going and seeing a hazard he could have seen had he casually glanced at the floor in front of him. He had absolutely every reason to believe that it being a holiday, and therefore no clerks working behind the counter, that there, more than likely would be a hazard back there, and certainly if the floor was shadowy he should have been more alert. The appellant being negligent as a matter of law the verdict of the lower court should be affirmed with costs to respondent.
CROCKETT, J., being disqualified, did not participate.

Mingus v. Olsson, 114 Utah 505, 201 P. 2d 495; Knox v. Snow, 119 Utah 222, 229 P. 2d 874; Compton v. Ogden Union R. & Depot Co., 120 Utah 453, 235 P. 2d 515; Bird v. Clover Leaf-Harris Dairy, 102 Utah 330, 125 P. 2d 797.