Mikrut v. Pellow, A--656

• Decision Date: 03 January 1961
• Docket Number: No. A--656,A--656
• Parties: Patricia MIKRUT, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Herbert PELLOW, Executor under the Last Will and Testament of Grace Becker, Deceased, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

Page 14

65 N.J.Super. 14

166 A.2d 809

Patricia MIKRUT, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Herbert PELLOW, Executor under the Last Will and Testament

of Grace Becker, Deceased, Defendant-Appellant.

No. A--656.

Superior Court of New Jersey

Appellate Division.

Argued Oct. 18, 1960.

Decided Jan. 3, 1961.

Samuel A. Larner, Newark, for defendant-appellant (Budd, Larner & Kent, Newark, and Hommell & Hommell, Sussex, attorneys).

Emanuel A. Honig, Franklin, for plaintiff-respondent.

Before Judges PRICE, GAULKIN and FOLEY.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

FOLEY, J.A.D.

Defendant appeals from a judgment of the Law Division entered in favor of plaintiff in a negligence case tried without a jury.

Grace Becker, now deceased, was the owner of a three-story, four-family apartment building in Sussex, New Jersey. The first floor was occupied by a drug store; two apartments were on each of the second and third floors. Defendant admittedly reserved control of the stairway, foyer and front doorway used in common by the second and third-floor tenants. Plaintiff had lived with her daughter and son-in-law in one of the third floor apartments since December 1956. On February 9, 1958 plaintiff, while leaving the premises, grasped the handle of the front door with her right hand and attempted to pull the door open. She pulled 'hard.' The door remained stationary but the handle and shank to which it was affixed came loose in her hand, as a result of which plaintiff, off balance, fell backwards, forcibly striking her lower back against the stairway.

There was ample evidence that for a long period of time the door had been extraordinarily hard to open, that numerous complaints of this had been made to the landlord by tenants, and that the landlord had promised to remedy the condition. It appeared also that in September 1957 the landlord hired one Banks to inspect the door. He planed it, but recommended that a new door be installed because it was 'weatherbeaten,' and 'old and sagging.' The landlord authorized the installation, but in October Banks suffered a broken leg and, thereafter, was unable to do this work. For a short time after it was planed the door worked a 'little easier,' but then it was painted and again became as difficult to open as before. Defendant offered no evidence to refute these facts.

The door handle and shank were put in evidence and we have examined the device. The stripping of the threading is so extensive as to present mute evidence of long and continued hard usage. At least, a fact finder could so conclude.

It is, of course, basic that a landowner is called upon only to remedy defects of which he has notice, or which he had an opportunity to discover and to remedy. Schnatterer v Bamberger & Co., 81 N.J.L. 558, 79 A. 324, 39 L.R.A., N.S., 1077 (E. & A. 1911). Defendant argued at the trial and asserts here that the cause of plaintiff's injury was the sudden and unanticipated failure of the door handle to serve its ordinary purpose, and that the landlord had no prior notice of any defect therein, nor was the ruinous condition of the shank discoverable upon reasonable inspection, and so the defendant was entitled to a dismissal as a matter of law.

Conceding that the landlord had notice of the stubbornly sticky door, defendant nevertheless contends that such notice was immaterial since it was a 'latent' defect in the handle, not discoverable upon reasonable inspection, which caused plaintiff's injuries. While the tral court did not base its factual determination upon a finding that the duty of the landlord to reasonably inspect his premises embraced inspection of the interior of the handle, we pause to observe that what a landlord is required to do in the discharge of such duty cannot be defined by arbitrary rule. He is required to do whatever is reasonable under circumstances known to him, or of which he is chargeable with knowledge. It is commonly known that the stress placed upon a door handle is proportionate to the degree of force which is required to pull the door open. We think that a trier of facts, while not compelled to do so, could legitimately infer that where, as here, a landlord knows that the condition of a door is such that the handle is subjected to excessive strain every time the door is pulled open, he is called upon to inspect the interior of the handle to ascertain what effect, if...