Gordon Sleeprite Corporation v. Waters

• Citation: 168 A. 846,165 Md. 354
• Decision Date: 09 November 1933
• Docket Number: 6.
• Parties: GORDON SLEEPRITE CORPORATION v. WATERS.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Maryland

168 A. 846

165 Md. 354

GORDON SLEEPRITE CORPORATION v. WATERS.

No. 6.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

November 9, 1933

Appeal from Superior Court of Baltimore City; Samuel K. Dennis Judge.

Action by William Harrison Waters, to his own use and to the use of the Commercial Casualty Company, against the Gordon Sleeprite Corporation. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals.

Reversed.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and PATTISON, URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT DIGGES, PARKE, and SLOAN, JJ.

Joseph Wase, of Baltimore, for appellant.

Robert France, of Baltimore (William Curran, Paul Higinbotham Walter V. Harrison, and Harrison & France, all of Baltimore on the brief), for appellee.

SLOAN Judge.

The plaintiff, William Harrison Waters, was employed by James J. Moran, for whom he went on April 18, 1932, to the office of the defendant, the Gordon Sleeprite Corporation, on East Fayette street to collect a bill. While engaged on this errand he fell down the defendant's elevator shaft and was injured. He collected compensation from his employer's insurer and he and the insurer sued the defendant for damages for the injuries sustained (Code, art. 101, § 58), and it is from a judgment in their favor this appeal is taken.

The plaintiff, Waters, testified that he went to the office of the defendant, which was located on the north side of West Fayette street, adjoining the mattress factory of the defendant on the west. The factory building is Nos. 1240 and 1242 Fayette street and the office No. 1244, each having an entrance from the street. The office and factory form an L, in which there is a yard extending from the rear of the office along the west side of the factory fifty feet to an alley. The only access to the factory from the office is from the street and across the yard. The ground floor of the factory is lighted by two windows on each side of the door facing the yard and an elevator shaft is located opposite and about seven feet from the door. Waters said no one was in the office while he was there. He waited about five minutes, then went out of the office, across the yard and into the factory and, as stated in the record, he "intended to go up to the elevator gate and holler up the shaft to attract attention, but before he got there he fell down the shaft because the gate nearest to him was up, leaving the shaft unprotected, there being no chain or bar across the pit; that the gate he saw down was on the far side; that it was dark at the elevator shaft and in the building but that he did see the hole." It appears that there were gates on opposite sides of the elevator, and that the near gate was up and the far one down; that Waters mistook the far gate for the entrance to the elevator, and in going toward it, passed under the near gate, which was up, and fell into the cellar. He had never been inside the building before the day of the accident. He had on one occasion delivered a machine at the rear door of the factory building and did not see an elevator then.

The question here is whether the defendant owed Waters any duty for the violation of which it is answerable in damages, or were his injuries the result of his own voluntary act?

The rule by which liability is to be determined, as expressed by Judge Alvey in Maenner v. Carroll, 46 Md. 193, 213, is: "A party has the right to use his land as he pleases, except as he may be restrained by duty to the public or to private individuals. But any individual who complains of the manner in which a defendant may have used his own land, should show with certainty and precision both the right of the plaintiff and the duty of the defendant, and in what manner such right and duty have been violated." In the case of an invitee it was said in Riganis v. Mottu, 156 Md. 340, 343, 144 A. 355, 356, that the defendant "was bound either to exercise ordinary care to see that [the] premises were reasonably safe for him, or, if they were not, to warn [him] the appellant of any latent or concealed danger," though "it is oftentimes difficult to determine whether the circumstances make a case of invitation or only of mere license. 'The principle,' says Mr. Campbell in his treatise on Negligence, 'appears to be that invitation is inferred where there is a common interest or mutual advantage, whilst a license is inferred where the object is the mere pleasure or benefit of the person using it.' " Benson v. Baltimore Traction Co., 77 Md. 535, 541, 26 A. 973, 975, 20 L. R. A. 714, 39 Am. St. Rep. 436.

In these cases of latent, or concealed danger on one's premises, it is always a question of fact as to whether one injured comes within the rule, and it is the facts in the case that make the decisions precedents. So that each case must depend largely upon its own facts. Dickey v. Hochschild, Kohn & Co., 157 Md. 450, 146 A. 282; Maryland State Fair v. Henderson, 164 Md. 587, 165 A. 698. The defendant in his brief says, "The case is quite analogous to Morgenstern v. Sheer, 145 Md. 208, 125 A. 790." There (page 219 of 145 Md., 125 A. 790, 794) "the plaintiff entered the building through what he, and other witnesses not familiar with the building, took to be the main entrance, and followed the hallway, in which there was, according to his testimony, sufficient light to enable him to see 10 or 12 feet ahead of him, looking for steps or an elevator to the upper floors until he fell into the unprotected elevator shaft." The plaintiff entered the building for the purpose of going to the fourth floor to see tenants, who had asked him the day before the accident to work for them. "The defendants maintained two entrances, and if one was intended as a freight entrance only, was dangerous and likely to be mistaken for the proper entrance, it was the duty of the defendants to warn persons against its use." The difference in the situation there disclosed and that here presented is so clear that that case loses its force as a precedent here.

More nearly akin in its facts is the case of Hyde v Blumenthal, 136 Md. 445, 110 A. 862, 864, which this court, in Morgenstern v. Sheer, distinguished by saying: "There the injured party, instead of entering the building through the entrance intended for the use of the public and with which he was familiar, elected to use an entrance not intended for his use, and with which he was not familiar, and to proceed along a hallway...