Firth v. Marhoefer, 80-877
| Decision Date | 04 November 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 80-877,80-877 |
| Citation | 406 So.2d 521 |
| Parties | Hetty S. FIRTH, Appellant, v. Gilbert L. MARHOEFER d/b/a Royal Admiral Apartments, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
G. Ware Cornell, Jr., of McCune, Hiaasen, Crum, Ferris & Gardner of Fort Lauderdale, for appellant.
Charles T. Kessler of Pyszka, Kessler & Adams, Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.
This appeal is from a slip and fall case. At issue is the propriety of an order striking testimony which showed that sometime before the accident, the apartment house/hotel management was aware that water and other slippery substances collected on the floor of the passenger elevators and that the management had utilized carpets to absorb these substances. In our view, this testimony was relevant to the issue of notice, i. e., whether the slippery condition was a recurring problem which imposed a duty on the landlord to undertake reasonable preventive measures. Since its exclusion was erroneous and extremely prejudicial to the plaintiff, we reverse and remand for a new trial.
Appellant, Hetty S. Firth, was injured on May 16, 1978 when she slipped and fell in a passenger elevator on the premises of the Royal Admiral Apartments on Galt Ocean Mile in Fort Lauderdale. Mrs. Firth was seventy-two years old at the time of the accident and had resided at the Royal Admiral in a rental apartment since 1964. She testified that she left her apartment on the sixteenth floor and walked down the hallway to the elevator. She stepped inside, put her packages down, turned to push the button for the lobby, stepped backwards and slipped and fell. Mrs. Firth sustained serious injuries and thereafter sued the owner of the apartment building and his insurance carrier.
Testimony at trial revealed that the building was served by two passenger elevators and a service elevator. Since both the beach and a pool were readily accessible, house rules required bathers to utilize the service elevator. However, a former manager, Joanne Turner, testified that the rule was often disregarded and that it was difficult to enforce. She said that the service elevator was in use most of the time and thus unavailable to tenants and guests in the hotel-apartment building. She also testified that during her tenure as manager, the floors in the passenger elevators had been covered with carpeting. In fact, the management had maintained two sets of carpeting for each elevator so that when one set became wet and soiled it could be replaced by the other. Ms. Turner said that "quite frequently" the carpets in the passenger elevators had become soiled from "water from bathers, dog droppings or residue and sand, tar." Sometime after Ms. Turner's termination in 1977, the carpeting in the passenger elevators was removed, exposing a vinyl or linoleum floor.
At the close of plaintiff's case, defendant/appellee moved to strike all of the testimony regarding carpeting. The court granted the motion and instructed the jury as follows:
Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard...
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