Oppenheim v. Pitcairn
| Decision Date | 03 June 1940 |
| Docket Number | No. 53.,53. |
| Citation | 292 N.W. 374,293 Mich. 475 |
| Parties | OPPENHEIM v. PITCAIRN et al. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Action by Marion E. Oppenheim against Norman B. Pitcairn and another, receivers for the Wabash Railway Company and Fort Street Union Depot Company, a Michigan corporation, for personal injuries. From a judgment for defendants, plaintiff appeals.
Affirmed.Appeal from Circuit Court, Wayne County; John J. Maher, acting judge.
Argued before the Entire Bench.
Royal A. Oppenheim, of Detroit, for plaintiff and appellant.
Fred G. Cadwell, of Detroit, for defendants and appellees Norman B. Pitcairn and Frank C. Nicodemus, Jr.
John C. Shields and William R. Althans, both of Detroit, for defendant and appellee Fort Street Union Depot Co.
Plaintiff arrived on a train at defendants' depot on a rainy and slushy afternoon in April, 1938. She gave her baggage to a porter and asked him to follow her. She walked from the train shed into the station, through the station waiting room, and out the right side of a double doorway of a marquee-covered entrance where she met some of her family. On discovering that the porter did not follow her, she started back into the station through the same doorway. Coming in, she opened the door at her right, which was, of course, not the side of the entrance through which she had previously walked, ‘took a couple of steps and slipped and fell on the floor.’ As a result of the fall her front teeth were broken. This action was brought to recover for her injuries.
The floor was of smooth terrazzo construction. Plaintiff testified that she fell at a spot that was ‘west and slushy,’ although the path she first followed in going through the door on the other side of the same entrance seemed to be dry. After the fall her clothes were ‘wet and slushy.’ Her mother testified that after a porter informed her of plaintiff's misfortune, she hurried into the depot through the same entrance, and that she herself slipped but fortunately did not fall. At the close of plaintiff's proofs, the trial judge directed a verdict for defendant on the ground that there was no evidence in the record to indicate how long this condition had existed and that, therefore, the burden of proof of negligence had not been sustained.
Defendants owed a duty of maintenance of its station floor commensurate with the danger reasonably to be apprehended. They are clearly not insurers of the safety of passengers on the station house premises (Selman v. City of Detroit, 283 Mich. 413, 278 N.W. 112); nor is the law as exacting in the care required in this respect as it is in the conveying of passengers. Anda v. Chicago, etc., Transit Co., 231 Mich. 567, 204 N.W. 761;McCormick v. Railway Co., 141 Mich. 17, 104 N.W. 390. Fault-the negect in the duty of reasonable care-is the basis of liability, and the breach of duty must be proved by the party making the assertion. Negligence will not be presumed...
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