Moore v. People's Palace

• Decision Date: 13 April 1935
• Docket Number: No. 18.,18.
• Citation: 178 A. 191
• Parties: MOORE v. PEOPLE'S PALACE.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

178 A. 191

MOORE

v. PEOPLE'S PALACE.

No. 18.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

April 13, 1935.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Hudson County.

Action by James Moore against the People's Palace, a corporation of the State of New Jersey. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals.

Reversed, and venire de novo awarded.

Argued January term, 1935, before BROGAN, C. J., and PARKER and BODINE, JJ.

David M. Klausner, of Jersey City, for appellant.

George T. Vickers, of Jersey City, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

The case on appeal was tried in the Hudson county court of common pleas, the jury finding for the plaintiff, and from the judgment accordingly entered the defendant corporation appeals.

The following are the pertinent facts: The defendant is the owner of a building known as People's Palace in Jersey City and had rented out three rooms to a lodge of which the plaintiff was a member and officer. On March 14, 1931, an accident, in which the plaintiff was injured, occurred. The accident in question happened in one of the rented rooms, which might be called a locker room, adjoining the lodge room. In this room were several lockers containing the paraphernalia of the lodge. Prom one of the exhibits in the case, it appears that two of the lockers, to wit, those numbered 4 and 5, were affixed to the wall at a height of perhaps nine feet above the floor. The defendant had provided a ladder for the use of the tenant to gain access to these lockers. Just before the evening meeting of the lodge, the plaintiff had ascended the ladder and was in the act of taking out some lodge property from these lockers when the ladder gave way or slipped from under him, as the complaint charges, and the plaintiff fell to the floor and suffered a broken kneecap.

The defendant is charged with negligence, in that it maintained the said room in an unsafe condition by permitting the floors thereof to be in an "oily and slippery condition" and by "providing the ladder aforesaid which was unsafe and out of repair" and unsatisfactory for the purpose for which the defendant placed it there, namely, to reach the said lockers.

The appellant urges that the court below fell into error in the trial of the cause: (a) In rejecting defendant's motion for nonsuit; (b) in refusing to direct verdict for defendant; and (c) in the admission of testimony.

In the plaintiff's case it was developed that when the plaintiff was on the ladder, engaged in bringing some property out of the lockers, for use at the lodge meeting that night, the ladder slid across the floor causing him to fall and suffer the injury mentioned. it appears that the ladder originally was of the "spreader" type; that is, one having a hinge midway between the top and bottom connecting the front and rear upright sections. This ladder, however, while it had been one of the spreader type, had no spreaders on it at the time of the accident, but instead the rear upright, as we understand the testimony, was bound to the front section with wire. Affixed to the top of the ladder, apparently as some sort of a substitute for the security of the "spreader," was a "cleat" or angle iron, one part of which was screwed into the platform top of the ladder and the other part of which was calculated to rest, and in this case did rest, upon the wooden projection which formed the floor of the lockers in question which were, as has been said, a matter of nine feet above the floor of the room.

It further appeared in the testimony of the...