Great Atlantic & Pac. Tea Co. v. Rosenberger
| Decision Date | 05 March 1962 |
| Docket Number | No. 5384,5384 |
| Parties | THE GREAT ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC TEA COMPANY v. MATTIE LEE ROSENBERGER. Record |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
Henry H. Whiting (Kuykendall & Whiting, on brief), for the plaintiff in error.
John F. Anderson (Largent, Anderson & Larrick, on brief), for the defendant in error.
Mattie Lee Rosenberger, the plaintiff, brought an action against The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, the defendant, seeking to recover damages for personal injuries allegedly sustained when she fell in the defendant's store in Winchester. A jury trial resulted in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $1,000.00, upon which the trial court entered final judgment. We granted the defendant a writ of error.
A number of errors are assigned to the actions of the trial court but, in the view we take of the case, it is necessary to consider only those which present the question of whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the jury's finding that the defendant was negligent.
The evidence is not in conflict. It shows that the plaintiff entered the defendant's store about 5:30 p.m. on November 28, 1959, accompanied by her daughter and grandson. The daughter made her purchases and proceeded to the check-out stands in the front of the store.
The plaintiff then 'decided to get just a few things' for herself. Taking her grandson with her, she went to another part of the store and selected her items, including a bag of potatoes, all of which she carried in her arms.
Meanwhile, another customer had dropped and broken a large bottle of liquid starch, light blue in color, on the dark floor in the open area between the food display counters and the check-out stands. The starch spread over an area four to five feet in diameter.
The store manager immediately closed the check-out counter adjacent to the pool of starch, posted a store employee at the starch to guide customers around it, and dispatched another employee to the rear of the store to secure a mop to remove the starch.
The plaintiff proceeded to the front of the store to go through the check-out stands. As she approached the pool of starch she looked behind her to see if her grandson was following and, while so looking, stepped into the starch and slipped and fell.
Although the area was well-lighted, the plaintiff did not see the starch before she fell, nor did she see the guard posted there, who was engaged in directing a young child around the pool to a check-out stand.
The employee who had been sent to secure a mop returned at about the same time the plaintiff fell. He, together with other employees, cleaned up the starch immediately after the accident occurred.
In reaching a decision in this case, we do not overlook the fact that the plaintiff has secured a jury verdict which has the approval of an able trial judge. It is our duty to uphold the verdict unless it is plainly wrong or without credible evidence to support it.
Generally, the question of a defendant's negligence is for the jury to decide. But where the facts are such that reasonable men could draw no other inference or conclusion from them than that the defendant was not in default, then a purely legal question is presented for the determination of the court. In other words where one, and only one, result is warranted from the facts, negligence becomes a matter of law. Nehi Bottling Co. v. Lambert, 196 Va. 949, 955, 86 S.E.2d 156; Ches. & O.R.Co. v. Paris, 111 Va. 41, 45, 68 S.E. 398.
This brings us to a test of the evidence in the case before us.
The defendant was under a duty, in the exercise of ordinary care, to have its premises in a reasonably safe condition for the plaintiff's visit. And the plaintiff had the right to assume that the defendant had discharged its duty and that she was upon safe premises until she knew, or should have known, of an unsafe condition. Charles v. Commonwealth Motors, 195 Va. 576, 577, 79 S.E.2d 594, Knight v. Moore, 179 Va. 139, 145, 146, 18 S.E.2d 266.
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