Quam v. Nelson-Ryan Flight Service, NELSON-RYAN
| Decision Date | 29 July 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 39856,NELSON-RYAN,39856 |
| Parties | Burton QUAM, Respondent, v.FLIGHT SERVICE, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
One who furnishes equipment for compensation for a business use by another, under circumstances where he retains the exclusive right to maintain the equipment and it is foreseeable that damage might result from defects in it, owes a duty to use reasonable care to provide equipment that is safe for its intended use and free from defects of which he has knowledge or which he could have discovered by use of reasonable care.
Iverson, Coulter & Nelson, Minneapolis, for appellant.
Farnes & Skaar, and John L. Prueter, Minneapolis, for respondent.
This is an appeal from a judgment entered in the municipal court of Minneapolis for damages caused to a light, 4-passenger plane while it was parked on defendant's premises. It is contended that the verdict is not supported by the evidence.
It appears that plaintiff, an airplane pilot, is the owner of a small, single-engine airplane which he uses to teach instrument flying. At the time of the occurrences hereinafter related that activity was a hobby of the plaintiff which he intended to develop into a business on retirement. He maintained the plane on premises owned by defendant, Nelson-Ryan Flight Service, where there was assigned to him a space to keep the plane for which he paid $7.50 a month. It was recognized that the plane would be exposed to the elements and, in order to safely keep it in place, defendant had installed three stakes to which ropes were attached. When the plane was parked the ropes would be tied to rings located on each wing of the plane and at the tail spring. In the late afternoon of July 22, 1962, while the plane was parked on defendant's premises, one of the ropes broke during a severe storm, causing the plane to be thrown about and resulting in damage which is the subject of this lawsuit.
The trial court indicated to the jury:
'In order to recover on his claim, the plaintiff must prove by the preponderance of the evidence that the rope furnished by the defendant was defective or insufficient for its intended use; that the plaintiff's property was damaged and that defendant's failure to furnish a rope sufficient for its intended use was a direct cause of the damage to plaintiff's property.
'The defendant must prove by a preponderance of the evidence its affirmative defenses, the...
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...these theories, but rather, on the common theory of negligence as discussed in the factually similar case of Quam v. Nelson-Ryan Flight Service, 274 Minn. 475, 144 N.W.2d 551 (1966). In Quam v. Nelson-Ryan Flight Service, Supra, the plaintiff had been assigned a space on the defendant's pre......