Anderson v. Winkle

• Decision Date: 17 July 1942
• Docket Number: 33175.
• Citation: 5 N.W.2d 355,213 Minn. 77
• Parties: ANDERSON et al. v. WINKLE.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

5 N.W.2d 355

213 Minn. 77

ANDERSON et al. v. WINKLE.

No. 33175.

Supreme Court of Minnesota

July 17, 1942

Syllabus by the Court.

1. A landlord who retains possession of a hall and a stairway in a building for the common use of several tenants may be found guilty of negligence in failing to guard against the turning up of a strip of brass edging on a stairway installed to hold down floor covering, which was subject to such wear and tear by continual use as to cause it to turn up.

2. Whether a blind person who was being helped by a person in full possession of her faculties to descend a stairway was guilty of contributory negligence in tripping over an upturned brass strip installed to hold down floor covering was a fact question for the jury.

LORING, J dissenting.

Hoke, Cobb & Janes, of Minneapolis, and A. H. Clemens, of Rochester, for appellant.

Fraser &amp Fraser, of Rochester, for respondents.

PETERSON Justice.

Inga Anderson, a blind woman, one of the plaintiffs in the two actions now before us, was injured by falling down the stairs of a building owned by the defendant. She brought an action for personal injuries, and her husband, L. S. Anderson, sued for loss of services and medical expenses. The two actions were consolidated for trial and resulted in a verdict of $1,500 for Mrs. Anderson and one of $300 for her husband. The defendant moved for judgment or a new trial in each case and appeals from an order denying both his motions. Two questions are presented: (1) Whether the evidence sustains a finding of negligence, and (2) whether plaintiff Inga Anderson was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law.

The plaintiffs' causes of action are based entirely upon negligence with relation to the condition of defendant's stairway down which Mrs. Anderson fell. The building had two floors. There were seven offices on the second floor patronized by approximately 50 people daily. The stairway, which was 42 or 44 inches wide, extended from the ground to the upper floor. The hallway at the top was a little wider. The long way of the hall was east and west with the stairway at the west end. A brass edging was fastened along the nose of the top step of the stairway for the purpose of holding down and protecting the edge of the rubberoid floor covering which lay along the hallway at the top of the stairway. The edging was 30 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide on top. There were parallel corrugations running lengthwise of the edging on the side toward the edge of the step. The part toward the floor covering was smooth and about an inch in width. When received from the factory, the edging had perforations, at intervals of about seven inches, running lengthwise, just behind the corrugated part, for the screws used to fasten it to the wooden floor.

Defendant acquired the building in 1927 about 14 years prior to the accident. Because of continual use, the edging had become so worn and the corrugation so reduced that the entire surface was smooth. About three years prior to the accident, the edging had become so badly worn on the side toward the handrail, where apparently the traffic was the heaviest, that it was necessary to nail it down on the edge along the rubberoid from the handrail side to within one foot of the other side. At the time of the accident the part which had no nails in it had become so worn that it was in substantially the same condition as the rest of the strip. Plaintiffs claimed that this part of the edging had been bent up along the edge from one-eighth to three-eighths of an inch above the rubberoid so that Mrs. Anderson's heel caught on it, causing her fall.

Accompanied by her daughter, plaintiff had been attending to some business in one of the offices. The office door opened into the hallway near the south side of the top of the stairway. As they came out of the doorway, her daughter closed the office door but testified that she retained her hold on her mother's left arm. Evidently Mrs. Anderson crossed to the farther side of the narrow hallway and turned toward the head of the stairs. She testified that in attempting to find the railing she slid her feet along, caught her heel on the turned up strip, and fell headlong. Her daughter said that she did not relinquish her hold on her mother until it was broken by the fall.

Defendant denied actual knowledge of the defect. There was evidence tending to show that within half an hour after the accident the eastern edge of the north end of the brass edging near which Mrs. Anderson fell was bent up from one-eighth to three-eighths of an inch from the surface of the hall floor. Plaintiffs' theory is that defendant was negligent in failing to take notice that long and continual use of the stairs would cause such wear and tear of the edging that it would turn up, as it did, and that defendant not only had notice that such would be the inevitable result of the use of the stairs, but also that he had actual knowledge of such fact, acquired while nailing down the strip three years before the accident.

Van Winkle, son of the defendant, testified that he swept the hall and stairway the day before the accident, going over the edging in question twice, and that it was not bent up at that time. He swept the hall three times a week and scrubbed it Sundays. But he also testified that the strip was in the same condition immediately after the accident as it had always been. He denied that the strip was raised as plaintiffs claimed. It was defendant's theory that plaintiff Inga Anderson fell down the stairs without fault on his part. The son's testimony as to the condition of the strip was contradicted by several witnesses.

1. A landlord who rents out parts of a building to various tenants, reserving halls and stairways for their common use, is a possessor of the parts reserved by him.

A possessor of premises used by business visitors, while not an insurer of their safety, is bound to exercise reasonable care to construct and to maintain his premises in a reasonably safe condition for their use. The duty is continuing in nature. It does not end with an original safe construction or installation, but continues so long as the premises are devoted to such use. Reasonable inspection during such use is a duty incident to the maintenance of the premises.

A possessor of land is subject to liability for the disrepair of a building which reasonable care would have discovered and made safe. A person under the duty to exercise reasonable care is bound to take notice of the ordinary operation of the laws and physical forces of nature. Heidemann v. City of Sleepy Eye, 195 Minn. 611, 264 N.W. 212; Williams v. Dickson, 122 Minn. 49, 141 N.W. 849, 850. ^[1] The cited cases involved the decay of wooden structures. In Williams v. Dickson, we said: "The 'care, supervision, and control' of a sidewalk,' said the court in Furnell v. [City of] St. Paul, 20 Minn. 117, 123 [20 Gil. 101, 107], 'being imposed upon defendant, no argument is needed to establish the proposition that such care and supervision require notice to be taken of the certain tendency of wood sidewalks to decay. This tendency is the result of natural causes, whose operation is so constant, familiar, and common as to be known to everybody. To call that care and supervision which did not take into account this tendency to decay would be a contradiction interms. Such care and supervision would be a positive neglect of legal duty." (Italics supplied.)

In Hastings v. F. W. Woolworth Co., Inc., 189 Minn. 523, 525, 250 N.W. 362, 363, defendant was held negligent for maintaining in its store a floor with a small hole in which plaintiff's heel caught, causing her to trip and injure herself. The evidence showed that the hole 'did not appear to be a fresh one.'

A person is bound to take notice that not only wood, but other substances also are subject to decay, deterioration, and breakage and are liable to become dangerous by long and continual use. In this age, when so much metal, rubber, plastics, and other materials are used, it is just as necessary to impose such a duty upon the users of such materials as it was to impose that duty upon users of wood in the days when wood was the material predominantly used. The rule that the possessor of premises must take notice of the operation of natural causes has been applied in cases involving metal and other materials. Peil v. Reinhart, 127 N.Y. 381, 27 N.E. 1077, 12 L.R.A. 843 (carpet), (see Soper v. Erickson, 172 Minn. 377, 215 N.W. 865, supra); Maton Bros. v. Central Illinois Pub. Serv. Co., 269 Ill.App. 99 (deterioration of black iron pipe used as a gas main); O'Gorman v. Kansas City, 233 Mo.App. 124, 93 S.W.2d 1132 (deterioration of iron manhole and cover).

The inference is permissible that wear and tear due to continual use caused the edge along the rubberoid to turn up. The fact that defendant three years prior to the accident nailed down approximately 18 inches of the edge of the edging along the rubberoid toward the handrail side is explainable only upon the ground that it had turned up. Otherwise, why was it necessary to nail it down? The fact that about three years prior to the accident the brass strip had become so badly worn because of continual use that it was necessary to nail down a part of it to keep it from turning up on the floor covering side was sufficient to charge defendat with actual knowledge that the continued use of the stairs would cause the strip to turn up and do the very thing which plaintiffs claim caused Mrs. Anderson to fall. A possessor of property may acquire knowledge of defects while making repairs. Widing v. Pennsylvania Mut. L. Ins. Co., 95 Minn. 279, 104 N.W. 239, 111 Am.St.Rep. 471, supra. In other words, a condition dangerous to...