Cooper v. Pritchard Motor Co.
| Decision Date | 04 December 1945 |
| Docket Number | 9717. |
| Citation | 36 S.E.2d 405,128 W.Va. 312 |
| Parties | COOPER v. PRITCHARD MOTOR CO. |
| Court | West Virginia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. A person who visits a show room, used to display automobiles for sale, for the purpose of negotiating the purchase of an automobile from the occupant of the room, is an invited person.
2. The proprietor of an automobile business, who uses and occupies a show room, owes to an invited person visiting the premises the duty to exercise ordinary care to keep and maintain such room, including its floor, in a reasonably safe condition.
3. In an action for damages for personal injuries, when the material facts are undisputed and reasonable men can draw but one conclusion from them, the question of negligence becomes one of law for the the court.
4. In an action based on negligence, it is reversible error for the trial court to refuse to direct a verdict in favor of the defendant when the plaintiff has failed to show facts from which negligence upon the part of the defendant can reasonably be inferred.
W T. O'Farrell, Frank R. Lyon, and Brown, Jackson & Knight, all of Charleston, for plaintiff in error.
M O. Litz and H. D. Rollins, both of Charleston, for defendant in error.
The plaintiff recovered a judgment for $1,500, based upon the verdict of a jury, in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County. At the instance of the defendant, who seeks reversal, the case is here on writ of error.
The defendant, Pritchard Motor Company, is, and for several years has been, engaged in the automobile business in a brick building located at the northeast corner of Virginia and Dunbar Streets in the City of Charleston Kanawha County, West Virginia. In the conduct of its business it occupied and maintained a show room on the ground or street floor of the building for the purpose of displaying automobiles for sale. This room fronted thirty-two feet, eight inches on Quarrier Street. There were twenty-two feet of clear and transparent glass windows, eight feet in height, and a double door seven feet in width, with glass in it, in the front at Quarrier Street. The side of the room extending along Dunbar Street, contained three plate glass windows, each eleven feet long and eight or nine feet high. Above them was a series of smaller windows. In order to display the automobiles, the room was lighted by large candle power ceiling and flood lights. Near the rear of the room, and at a distance of forty-one feet, eight inches from Quarrier Street, there was an incline or raised section in the floor which extended, parallel with the street, completely across the floor to each interior side wall. This section of the floor, which is designated as a roll or bulge by counsel for the plaintiff, was eight inches wide and it joined and connected the rear and the front sections of the entire floor of the room. It was of a uniform width of eight inches and it rose in that space from an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half in height from the point of its junction with the front section to the place where it joined and fitted into the surface level of the rear section of the floor. The surface at the edge of the incline, where it came together with the front section of the floor, was slightly convex or arch shaped, rising gradually toward the back of the room, and its surface at the rear edge, where it joined that section, flattened out on a level with the floor at that point. The entire floor of the room was constructed of tile arranged in alternately placed black and white square blocks, except that the tile in the incline, and in the floor sections immediately adjoining it on each side, was black in color.
At and prior to the time of her injury, on January 22, 1941, the plaintiff, a married woman, was living in Charleston. As the result of a previously made appointment with a salesman of the defendant, relative to an exchange of her automobile in the proposed purchase by her of a new one from the defendant, she brought, during the business hours of that day, her automobile to the defendant's shop and garage, which was located immediately back of the show room. Leaving her automobile there to be appraised, she entered the room through a door in the rear. She had been in the front part of the room eight or ten times previously, but she had never before been in the rear portion, and she had not seen and did not know of the location or the existence of the incline. On her way forward, while walking diagonally across the room toward its front, she stepped on the incline, slipped and fell, and in so doing she sustained a severe injury to her right ankle and the sacroiliac region of her back. She at once telephoned for a doctor and then, accompanied by the defendant's salesman, she went to a nearby building on Quarrier Street where she received prompt medical treatment.
Upon the trial of the case no attempt was made by the plaintiff to prove that the room was insufficiently lighted, or that the floor, including the incline, was slippery, or that there was any foreign or dangerous substance on it that would ordinarily cause a person to slip or fall. No complaint was made that the material of which the floor was constructed, including the incline, was unsafe or defective, or that the workmanship was faulty. The sole contention of the plaintiff was that the location and the shape or contour of the incline, where it joined the front and the rear sections of the floor of the room, created a dangerous condition which rendered the floor unsafe. Upon the argument of the case in this Court, it was conceded by counsel for the plaintiff that her right to recover depended upon the presence and the character of the surface of that part of the floor. Her counsel say that the case involves an unusual and unheard of construction; that this is a case of an incline, or as they designate it, a roll, without utility, and with no reason for its existence, which extended completely across the room at a point where such a condition was not to be expected. In short, her claim is based upon the proposition that the existence and the maintenance of the incline constituted actionable negligence on the part of the defendant. The evidence introduced in behalf of the plaintiff dealt mainly with the location and the character of the incline in the floor, the plaintiff's lack of knowledge of its condition, the place and the manner of her fall, and the nature of her resulting injuries.
The plaintiff, while testifying about the incline, which she spoke of as an offset in the floor, when asked how she happened to fall, replied that her fall was due to the offset. When further questioned concerning the nature of the offset, she stated, in effect, that she did not know it because she never examined it. A witness for the plaintiff, John B. Evans, who had formerly worked in the room and who was in the building at the time she fell but did not see her do so, testified that he knew the condition and the location of the incline, that he might have slipped on it occasionally but did not fall, and that during the period of about a year from May, 1940, until sometime in 1941, while he worked there, he might have seen someone else slip on the incline, but that he never saw anyone fall at that place. There was no evidence that any person, other than the plaintiff, ever had fallen on the floor. The plaintiff also admitted that shortly after her fall she might have told the defendant's salesman that she had a weak ankle and that she turned it for that reason. This conversation related to the condition of her ankle at the time she fell.
On the question of the use and the condition of the floor, witnesses produced by the defendant testified that it had been maintained by the defendant since the year 1931 in substantially the same condition that it was in at the time the plaintiff was injured; that during that period of time an average of one hundred persons daily for each day in each week had, without mishap, visited and passed over it, including the incline; that no complaint had ever been made concerning its condition; that no person other than the plaintiff had ever been injured on it; that it was the same type of floor in general use in the automobile display business; that it was well lighted at all times; that the floor was not as slippery as the usual tile floor because it had been installed and used for a number of years and had a tendency to get rough in such circumstances; and that the floor was no slicker than the floor in the court house in which the trial was held.
At the conclusion of the evidence for the plaintiff, and again after all the evidence was admitted, the defendant made a motion that the court direct a verdict in its favor, which motions the court denied. The plaintiff offered, and the court gave two instructions, to one of which the defendant objected. ...
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