Cote v. Arrighi
| Decision Date | 13 July 1960 |
| Docket Number | 10120,Nos. 10119,s. 10119 |
| Citation | 162 A.2d 797,91 R.I. 289 |
| Parties | Eva L. COTE v. Henry J. ARRIGHI et ux. Napoleon COTE v. Henry J. ARRIGHI et ux. Ex. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
William R. Goldberg, Ronald R. Gagnon, Pawtucket, for plaintiffs.
Gunning & LaFazia, Providence, for defendants.
These two actions of trespass on the case for negligence were brought by a husband and wife to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by the wife as the result of a fall while on the defendants' premises. The cases were tried together before a justice of the superior court sitting with a jury, and at the conclusion of the evidence for the plaintiffs he granted the defendants' motion for a nonsuit in each case. Each case is before us on the exception of the plaintiff to such decision.
It appears from the record that defendant Yvette Arrighi is the daughter of plaintiffs and the wife of defendant Henry J. Arrighi. The plaintiff husband seeks to recover only consequential damages resulting from his wife's injuries, and since his right to recover such damages depends upon the liability of defendants in the case of his wife, we shall hereinafter discuss the issues as if only her case were before us.
There is no substantial dispute as to the sequence of events that led to plaintiff's injury. On the morning of October 4, 1957 she and her husband, in response to a request from defendant Yvette, drove to defendants' house. The plaintiff entered the house while her husband remained outside. Shortly thereafter plaintiff emerged from the house, carrying in her arms defendants' infant daughter, and started to descend an outside stairway to the walk. The plaintiff testified that as she was descending the stairway she felt something hard beneath the sole of her right foot, which object, as she stepped on it, rolled from under her foot and precipitated her to the walk below. No testimony was introduced from anyone who claimed to have actually seen plaintiff fall.
Other than her own testimony that she stepped on something on the stairway, there was no testimony that there was an object on the stairway at the time she was descending. There was, however, the testimony of a neighbor that she had gone to the scene of plaintiff's fall shortly after she had been removed in an ambulance and that, as she arrived there, she observed a clothespin lying on the bottom step of the stairway. This witness further testified that she picked up the clothespin and tossed it to one side.
No direct testimony was adduced to explain the length of time that the clothespin had been on the stairway or the manner in which it got there. The plaintiff, however, called defendant Yvette as a witness, apparently under the provisions of General Laws 1956, § 9-17-14. She testified that usually every day she did her own laundry and using, among others, the same type of clothespin found by her neighbor, she hung it to dry in a yard reached by using the same stairway upon which plaintiff fell. She further testified that she did no laundry on the day of the accident, but that she might have hung some laundry to dry the day before. She also testified that she did not sweep the stairway with a broom every day and was unable to recall how long before the day plaintiff fell she last swept the stairway.
A trial justice in passing upon a motion for a nonsuit is required to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff without regard to its weight or to the credibility of the witnesses. Goulet v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 83 R.I. 310, 314, 116 A.2d 178. Under that rule the trial...
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Levy v. Industrial Nat. Bank of R.I.
...and draw all inferences most favorably to him. He cites O'Brien v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 293 F.2d 1 (3d Cir. 1961); Cote v. Arrighi, 91 R.I. 289, 162 A.2d 797; Spetelunas v. Dubuc, 85 R.I. 200, 129 A.2d 222. The plaintiff's premise is wrong. Those cases all involved jury trials. Also......
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...315 A.2d 56, 58-59 (1974) (expert testimony was not necessary to explain the slipperiness of a tile floor); Cote v. Arrighi, 91 R.I. 289, 292, 162 A.2d 797, 799 (1960) (holding jurors were permitted to conclude "on the basis of common knowledge and experience that the clothespin had been on......
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Guertin v. Antonelli
...notice that there might be an object on the stairs when plaintiff started to go to the cellar. The plaintiff cites the case of Cote v. Arrighi, R.I., 162 A.2d 797, where the plaintiff allegedly fell on an outside stairway of the defendants' house because of a clothespin on the stairway. The......