Morrison v. St. Luke's Health Corp., s. 69094
| Decision Date | 06 August 1996 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 69094,69122,s. 69094 |
| Citation | 929 S.W.2d 898 |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Virginia Lee MORRISON, Personal Representative of the Estate of Grace Morrison, Plaintiff/Respondent, v. ST. LUKE'S HEALTH CORPORATION and G.D. Searle & Company, Defendants/Appellants. |
Ronald C. Willenbrock, Julie S. Paez, Amelung, Wulff and Willenbrock, St. Louis, for St. Luke's Health Corp.
Gerald T. Noce, Thomas M. Buckley, Evans and Dixon, St. Louis, for G.D. Searle.
Canice Timothy Rice, Jr., St. Louis, for respondent.
Defendants, St. Luke's Health Corporation and G.D. Searle and Company, appeal from the trial court's judgment, entered pursuant to a jury verdict, in favor of plaintiff, Grace Morrison, 1 in her action for bodily injuries sustained in a fall which occurred in a doctor's office. The jury awarded plaintiff $400,000.00 in damages and the trial court entered judgment accordingly. We affirm.
Defendants challenge the submissibility of the case. In reviewing the submissibility of a case, we view the evidence, together with the reasonable inferences arising therefrom, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Harris v. Woolworth, 824 S.W.2d 31, 32 (Mo.App.1991). Further, we disregard the defendant's evidence except as it may aid the plaintiff. Id. The plaintiff may prove essential facts by circumstantial evidence as long as the facts proved and the conclusions to be drawn are of such a nature and are so related to each other that the conclusions may be fairly inferred. Id.
The evidence, viewed in this light, established that defendant, St. Luke's Health Corporation (St.Luke's), owned and operated not only a medical practice specializing in internal medicine and cardiology but also the offices in which the practice was located. On March 24, 1992, at approximately 11:00 a.m., plaintiff and her sister, Virginia Morrison (sister), arrived at the medical offices for a scheduled appointment with one of the physicians employed by St. Luke's.
Plaintiff was 92 years of age. Although she had problems with her vision and osteoarthritis, she was active and in relatively good health otherwise. She lived with her sister and was able to care for her needs independently. She walked without the assistance of a cane or walker.
At the same time plaintiff arrived at the office, a sales representative from defendant, G.D. Searle & Company (Searle), a pharmaceutical company, was also visiting the office. She called at the office once or twice a month. She talked with a medical assistant employed by St. Luke's who was sitting behind a chest-high counter which enclosed the nurses' station. The sales representative stood next to the counter; the medical assistant sat at her desk, facing toward the counter. The sales representative placed her briefcase on the floor next to the counter, setting it at an angle to the wall so that it protruded into the hallway. After chatting for about 2 to 5 minutes, she went into a small room opposite the nurses' station to check on the supply of drug samples. The sales representative testified that, as she did so, she left the briefcase in the hallway for about 10 to 30 seconds.
Another medical assistant, who also worked at the office and was employed by St. Luke's, exited the nurses' station and walked toward the waiting room down the hallway in which the sales representative was standing. This medical assistant testified, however, that she did not see either the Searle sales representative or the briefcase as she traversed this corridor. She held open the waiting room door, which was located across from the nurses' station, for plaintiff and her sister to enter the office. She was going to escort them to the room with the scale to weigh them and then place each of them in an examining room.
The waiting room door opened onto a hallway which ran in front of the nurses' station. The hallway continued around the nurses' station into a second hallway which ran at a right angle to the first hallway and which led to examining rooms. The small supply room which the sales representative entered was off this second hallway, directly across from the nurses' station. The sales representative entered the room as plaintiff started down the second hallway. Plaintiff walked in front of her sister; the medical assistant who was escorting them walked behind plaintiff and to the right of plaintiff's sister.
As plaintiff followed the hallway around the nurses' station and started down the second hallway toward the examining rooms, she fell. The medical assistant following behind her testified that she was looking "directly at" plaintiff when she saw her falling "forward." The Searle sales representative stated that although she did not see plaintiff enter the office or trip over the briefcase, she did see plaintiff in the act of falling. She described plaintiff as being "in the air" and "in flight." Plaintiff landed on the floor about four feet up the hallway from the sales representative's briefcase. Immediately after plaintiff fell, the sales representative came out of the supply room and told plaintiff's sister that she shouldn't have left her briefcase on the floor in the hallway. She then picked up the briefcase and left the doctor's office. Neither the sister nor the medical assistant noticed the briefcase in the hallway prior to plaintiff's fall.
Plaintiff sustained fractures to her hip and arm. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery to her hip. Two to four days after the fall, she suffered a stroke. At the time of trial, she was in a nursing home and was incapable of resuming the independent lifestyle she had enjoyed before the fall. At no time after the fall was she able to make a coherent statement concerning the fall. She was unable to testify at trial.
Plaintiff brought the present action: Count I sought damages against St. Luke's as the owner of the premises for its failure to know of the "dangerous condition" of the briefcase in the hallway and to either remove it or warn plaintiff; Count II sought damages against Searle for the negligence of its agent in creating the "dangerous condition" by placing the briefcase in the hallway. After a trial, the jury found in favor of plaintiff and awarded damages in the amount of $400,000.00. The jury assessed St. Luke's fault at 40 percent and Searle's fault at 60 percent. The trial court entered judgment in accordance with the jury verdict.
In its first point, Searle contends plaintiff failed to make a submissible case in that there was no evidence that the briefcase caused her to fall. It argues that no one saw her trip over the briefcase and that she never said she fell over the briefcase. It posits that because there was no direct evidence that she tripped over the briefcase, the jury engaged "in speculation and conjecture as to what caused plaintiff to fall."
To make a prima facie showing of causation, the plaintiff must show the defendant's negligent conduct more probably than not was a cause of the injury. Heacox v. Robbins Educational Tours, Inc., 829 S.W.2d 600, 603 (Mo.App.1992). The defendant's negligence need not be the sole cause of the plaintiff's injury, but simply a cause or a contributing cause. Id.
Here, there was sufficient evidence from which the jury could have found that the briefcase was a cause of plaintiff's fall. The second hallway leading to the examining rooms was at a right angle to the first hallway leading from the waiting room. Both hallways ran next to the nurses' station, which was enclosed by a chest-high counter. Plaintiff had to walk around the nurses' station to get into the second hallway. The Searle sales representative placed the briefcase next to the counter on the floor of the second hallway. When plaintiff entered the first hallway from the waiting room, the layout of the hallways and the height of the counter suggest that she would not have been able to see the briefcase from that vantage point. When she entered the second hallway, she would have come upon the briefcase shortly after rounding the corner of the nurses' station. She would have had little time to notice the presence of the briefcase on the floor in front of her.
In addition, the Searle sales representative admitted that she left the briefcase on the floor in the second hallway while she went into the supply room. The supply room was located in the general vicinity of where she placed the briefcase. The sales representative saw plaintiff falling in the area of the briefcase. She described plaintiff as being "in flight," a description which indicates that plaintiff did not just collapse to the ground, but rather that something propelled her through the air and to the floor. Plaintiff landed about four feet past the briefcase. The sales representative also stated that she shouldn't have left the briefcase on the floor.
Searle relies on Heacox to support its position that plaintiff failed to establish the essential element of causation. In Heacox, 829 S.W.2d at 601, the plaintiff was an elderly woman who fell while ascending an asphalt pathway on the St. Louis riverfront. She brought an action against the company which arranged the tour to the riverfront for its failure either to provide an escort or to warn her of the danger of the steep incline. Id. at 602. A bus driver testified that the slope would be steep for someone elderly or heavy; and the plaintiff testified that she did not see any debris or trash on the pathway and she did not know what caused her to fall "other than [the pathway] was really steep." Id. The court noted that "[t]here was no evidence in [the] plaintiff's case showing the degree of the incline nor is there any other standard for the jury to use to evaluate sensibly the testimony of the plaintiff and the bus driver." Id. at...
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