Davis v. Bader, 35618
| Decision Date | 23 March 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 35618,35618 |
| Citation | 57 Wn.2d 871,360 P.2d 352 |
| Court | Washington Supreme Court |
| Parties | Richard DAVIS and Gwendolyn Davis, his wife, Appellants, v. Anthony A. BADER and Mathilde A. Bader, his wife, Respondents. |
Warren Hardy, Seattle, for appellants.
William R. Lanthorn and Bruce Maines, Seattle, for respondents.
Except for an assignment of error relative to an instruction, we have another factual appeal prompted by the plaintiffs' dissatisfaction with the verdict of the jury and the judgment of dismissal entered thereon.
The plaintiffs occupied an apartment in a building owned by the defendants. To reach the street from the apartment, it was necessary to descend a flight of twelve steps (recessed into the hillside, or bank, between the apartment and the street). There was a brick retaining wall, and also handrails, on both sides of the steps. The ground contour was such that the handrails were higher than the top of the retaining walls, except at the street level and a few steps above it; and the handrails terminated two or three steps above the street level and just below the point where the retaining walls became higher than the handrails.
The plaintiff, Gwendolyn Davis, was descending the steps at 10:15 p. m. on a rainy night; she testified:
In an action against the owners of the apartment for the injuries and damages sustained in consequence of her fall, the claims of negligence submitted to the jury were: that the railing terminated at the second step above the bottom of the flight of stairs, and the failure to have the light at the top of the stairs burning.
The place where the handrails terminated was obvious from the pictures admitted in evidence; and it was conceded that the light at the head of the stairs was not burning at the time Mrs. Davis fell, and that it had been out for some time.
The only witnesses called by the defendants were for the purpose of establishing that Mrs. Davis' fall was not caused by any lack of light at the place where she testified she lost her balance and fell; their evidence was that a streetlight 111 feet from the bottom of the stairway was a '400-watt mercury vapor lamp' (rated at 20,000 lumens) and, even had the light at the head of the stairs been burning, this streetlight would have provided 73% of the available light on the stairs at the place of the fall; that there was another streetlight 72 feet away--a '115-watt incandescent lamp' (rated at 1500 lumens)--and it would have provided 6.5% of the light at that point. Had the light for which the defendants were responsible been burning, it would have furnished 20.6% of the available light.
The issues of negligence and proximate cause, and contributory negligence, were submitted to the jury; the plaintiffs took an exception to only one instruction, and that we will consider hereafter.
The jury, obviously, accepted the testimony of the experts and believed that there was sufficient light for Mrs. Davis to see where she was stepping.
It is not our province to determine the credibility of witnesses, nor can we say that the failure to extend the handrails to the bottom step was negligence, as...
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Riley's Estate, In re
...is not equipped, and as a matter of long-standing decisional law, cannot pass on the credibility of witnesses. See Davis v. Bader, 57 Wash.2d 871, 360 P.2d 352 (1961); Anderson v. Kurrell, 28 Wash.2d 227, 182 P.2d 1 (1947); Speckert v. Bunker Hill Arizona Mining Co., 6 Wash.2d 39, 106 P.2d ......
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...Cornejo should be held to the standard of a person exercising ordinary care, and was a correct statement of the law. Davis v. Bader, 57 Wash.2d 871, 874, 360 P.2d 352 (1961); Chase v. Continental Trading Corp., 5 Wash.App. 41, 43, 485 P.2d 463, review denied, 79 Wash.2d 1009 (1971); Mendenh......
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State v. Edwards, 342--III
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