Dillehay v. Minor
| Decision Date | 20 January 1920 |
| Docket Number | 32813 |
| Citation | 175 N.W. 838,188 Iowa 37 |
| Parties | E. J. DILLEHAY, Appellant, v. W. H. MINOR, Appellee |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Dickinson District Court.--JAMES DELAND. Judge.
ACTION at law to recover damages for personal injury. There was a directed verdict and judgment for the defendant, and plaintiff appeals.
Reversed.
Francis & Owen and Cosson & Francis, for appellant.
Heald & Cook, for appellee.
The defendant is the owner of a two story building in the town of Milford. The first story is occupied and used by him as a pool hall. The second story is divided into rooms to let. Some of these rooms are reached only by a flight of stairs at the rear of the building. Access to the other rooms, several in number, is provided by a flight of stairs leading up the side of the building from the front, and another leading up the same side from the rear, and landing on a common platform at the level of the second floor. From this platform there is an entrance, which serves all the second floor rooms except those at the rear, already mentioned.
In April, 1917, the defendant employed plaintiff to take charge of the pool hall, for which service plaintiff was to receive a stipulated weekly wage, and to have the use of one of the rooms on the second floor, to which access was had by the two stairways and platform to which we have just referred. Plaintiff took possession of the room assigned to him, and as the two flights of stairs leading to the entrance platform were both open, he used either, as happened to be most convenient, for the purposes of ingress and egress. In May 1917, when he had been in the defendant's service about six weeks, plaintiff left the pool hall to go to his room by way of the stairs leading up from the sidewalk in front to the landing platform. In so doing, the fourth or fifth step from the bottom gave way, causing him to fall back to the sidewalk and suffer bodily injury of more or less serious character.
Later, this action was brought at law to recover damages on account of such injury, which, it is alleged, was occasioned by the defendant's negligence in permitting the stairs to become and remain in a rotten, decayed, and unsafe condition.
Answering this claim, defendant admits that the stairway was old, decayed, and unsafe, and that plaintiff fell thereon, but denies that he was injured, and denies that defendant is chargeable with any negligence with respect to said stairway or with respect to the plaintiff's fall or alleged injury.
It is further pleaded that plaintiff knew the condition of the stairway; that the other flight of stairs to the platform was safe, to the knowledge of the plaintiff; that access to his room by the safe way just mentioned was as convenient as by the unsafe way, and plaintiff, having used the latter with full knowledge and appreciation of its dangerous condition, assumed the risk of such use, and for like reasons is also chargeable with contributory negligence.
The issues so joined were tried to a jury. At the close of the evidence, both parties having rested, the defendant moved for a directed verdict in his favor, on the following grounds:
(1) That it conclusively appears that the defect in the stairs was open and visible, and that another and safe way was provided for plaintiff's entrance to his room, and plaintiff, having taken the dangerous way with full knowledge of the conditions, assumed the risk.
(2) That, as a matter of law, plaintiff should be held guilty of contributory negligence.
(3) That, plaintiff being in the sole possession of the rooms served by these stairways, the defendant, as landlord, was under no duty or obligation to make the entrance or stairs safe for plaintiff's use.
This motion was sustained generally, and from that ruling, and from the judgment entered upon the directed verdict, the plaintiff appeals.
1. In argument to this court, counsel on both sides give principal attention to the third or last proposition above mentioned, relating to the duty, if any, resting upon a landlord to provide or maintain a reasonably safe entrance to leased premises.
It seems to be conceded by appellant that, where the landlord leases the entire premises to a tenant, without any promise or covenant to repair or keep in repair, the tenant takes the premises as he finds them, and assumes the risk of their safety. It is insisted, however, that this rule does not extend to entrances, stairways, platforms, corridors, and the like in which the tenant is granted no more than the right to use in common with the landlord or with other tenants of the landlord, and that, in such case, the latter is chargeable with negligence if he fails to exercise reasonable care to keep the common passages in proper condition, and he is liable to the tenant for injury so occasioned to him.
The appellee does not seriously question the correctness of this position, but denies that plaintiff has made a case for an application of the conceded principle, because, say counsel the plaintiff, at the time of his injury, was the only tenant in any of the rooms served by this stairway, and he is, therefore, not within the rule which charges the landlord with any responsibility for the condition...
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