Bunnell v. Waterbury Hospital

• Decision Date: 23 December 1925
• Citation: 103 Conn. 520,131 A. 501
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: BUNNELL v. WATERBURY HOSPITAL.

131 A. 501

103 Conn. 520

BUNNELL v. WATERBURY HOSPITAL.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

December 23, 1925

Appeal from Superior Court, New Haven County; Christopher L. Avery Judge.

Action by Elsie G. Bunnel, administratrix of the estate of Ivan L Bunnell, deceased, against the Waterbury Hospital, to recover damages for the alleged negligence of defendant. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. No error.

Walter E. Monagan and James W. Carroll, both of Waterbury, for appellant.

Ulysses G. Church, of Waterbury, for appellee.

Argued before WHEELER, C.J., and CURTIS, KEELER, MALTBIE, and HAINES, JJ.

WHEELER, C.J.

We take up first the ground of appeal based upon the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict. The jury might reasonably have found these facts based upon the evidence offered by the plaintiff. The defendant on May 25, 1924, and for several years prior thereto, had maintained, on the second story of the Buckingham Building in the city of Waterbury, a large assembly hall with a balcony on the third floor, which defendant rented for purposes of entertainment and public meetings. The defendant maintained, for the convenience and use of the public when this hall was rented, lobbies and stairways leading to the hall, cloak and toilet rooms on the second floor, and a stairway and hallway leading to the third floor. There was also a cloak room but no toilet room on the third floor. The rental of the hall included without additional charge all of these portions of the building including the cloak room, if the renters desired to use the same. The cloak room was situated directly across the hallway from the entrance to the balcony, and in the same approximate position with reference to the balcony entrance as were the toilets and cloak room on the second floor. The door to this cloak room on the night of May 25th was unlocked and open. The hallway outside was well lit, and the light from the hall lights, together with the reflection from street lights through a window, lighted. though somewhat dimly, this cloak room, which had upon its floor two hat and coat racks. On the side of the coat room opposite the door into the hall was a door opening upon a freight elevator shaft extending from the basement to the third floor. The hall was rented on May 25, 1924, to the Salvation Army for a meeting which was open to the public. The decedent, the husband of the plaintiff, came to the meeting with his two small children, for the purpose of meeting his wife and went with the children upstairs to the balcony of the third floor. One of the children desiring to go to a toilet, he left the balcony with them, crossed the hallway, and entered the cloak room directly opposite through the open door. Leaving the children, he went across the room to a door which bore no sign, warning against, or prohibiting, the opening of the door. The door was unlocked. He assuming it to be the door to a toilet, opened it and fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft and suffered injuries from which he subsequently died. The agent of the building and the janitor were the only persons who had keys for the door to the cloak room and that to the elevator shaft. There was an electric push button on the wall inside the cloak room for the turning on of the electric lights in the room, but the lights were not turned on at the time of the accident. The ordinances of the city of Waterbury required that all halls and appurtenant hallways and rooms used by the public for entertainments and meetings should be fully lighted during the period of holding such meetings.

The defendant's contention that the action of the trial court was erroneous rests upon two grounds: (1) That the defendant owed the decedent no duty other than to avoid towards him active negligence, and hence no basis for liability has been established. (2) That, whether defendant was negligent or not, decedent's own contributory negligence was a proximate cause of the injuries suffered by him. The first claim depends upon whether, on the facts, the decedent when in the cloak room was a trespasser or a licensee, or whether he was there upon the implied invitation of the defendant. The argument upon this point, as well as upon the other features which concern the setting aside of the verdict, mistakenly assumes that we are to find upon conflicting evidence the facts which it assumes the weight of the evidence shows ought to have been found in favor of the defendant. On the contrary, the facts are to be found on the most favorable view which can be reasonably taken of the plaintiff's evidence. The decedent was in the hall by invitation. He had the right to leave the hall and go upon the errand he did. When he descended from the balcony to the hall, he saw across the hall an open door somewhat dimly lighted. When he entered the cloak room to take his child to the toilet, he saw that it was a cloak room; he also saw the door across this small room, dimly lighted as it was. Having entered by the invitation of the defendant. he had the right to cross the room and seek the toilet through this door, and while in the room he was there upon the implied invitation of the defendant. He was neither a trespasser nor a licensee. To such an one the defendant owed the duty of refraining from willfully, that is intentionally, or wantonly injuring him. This rule is subject to the exception that when the defendant knew of the presence of a trespasser in a position of peril, his duty was to use ordinary care to avoid injuring him. Kalmich v. White, 95 Conn. 568, 571, 111 A. 845; Carlson v. Connecticut Co., 95 Conn. 724, 730, 112 A. 646. To the decedent, using the room by the implied invitation of the defendant, it owed a similar duty, and also the larger duty of exercising reasonable care so as to have the cloak room safe for the use of the decedent, since the privilege of user existed for the common interest of both the decedent and the defendant. Pomponio, Adm'r, v. N.Y. N.H. & H. R. Co., 66 Conn. 528, 541, 34 A. 491, 32 L.R.A. 530, 50 Am.St.Rep. 124; Camp v. Wood, 76 N.Y. 92, 32 Am.Rep. 282. To invite the decedent into this cloak room where it maintained an unlocked door to an elevator shaft on the third floor of a building, with no sign or warning upon this door or in this room to prevent users of the room from opening the door, and with no sufficient light in the room to enable him to anticipate from the character of the door that it was the entrance to an elevator shaft, was clearly negligence, as the complaint alleges. The defendant contests the issue of negligence, but we think it so clear against the defendant, when once the decedent is found to have been rightfully in the room and looking for a toilet upon the implied invitation of the defendant, that we do not esteem it necessary to further discuss this conclusion.

The only other contested issue upon this branch of the case is that the decedent's own negligence materially contributed to his injuries. In passing upon this point we start with the decedent rightfully in this room and rightfully approaching this door and intent upon opening it for the object of his search. His negligence, if any, consisted, not in opening the door, but in not looking after he had opened the door and before he had stepped across its threshold with the dim light behind him and the darkness of the elevator shaft in front of him. His course of conduct must be judged as the circumstances would then appear to a reasonable man. There is no sign of warning on or about the door; it is unlocked. It opens into the elevator shaft. A partial step, the foot upon the sill as the door is opened, the balance lost, even a little, and the fall is inevitable. The decedent opens the door and falls in. The test of the conduct of the decedent is that of the ordinary man under the same circumstances, and that is always to be resolved by the jury or trier. If differing conclusions might be reasonably reached under the circumstances existing as to whether decedent's conduct was negligent when he fell, our law made the jury, upon the facts in evidence which they might have reasonably found, the final judges of whether this decedent's negligence materially contributed to his fall and consequent injuries. Farrell v. Waterbury Horse R. R Co., 60 Conn. 239, 248, 257, 21 A. 675, 22 A. 544. From an examination of our law we think it will appear that--

" In cases involving the question of negligence, where the general rule of conduct is alone applicable, where the facts found are of such a nature that the trier...