Quinlan v. Cecchini

• Decision Date: 10 May 1977
• Citation: 363 N.E.2d 578,394 N.Y.S.2d 872,41 N.Y.2d 686
• Parties: , 363 N.E.2d 578 Loretta QUINLAN, by her father and natural guardian, Edwin Quinlan, et al., Appellants, v. Vito D. CECCHINI et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 872

394 N.Y.S.2d 872

41 N.Y.2d 686, 363 N.E.2d 578

Loretta QUINLAN, by her father and natural guardian, Edwin Quinlan, et al., Appellants, v. Vito D. CECCHINI et al., Respondents.

Court of Appeals of New York.

May 10, 1977.

Joseph J. Napoli and Morris J. Eisen, P. C., New York City, for appellants.

Benjamin Vinar, J. Robert Morris and Thomas R. Newman, New York City, for respondents.

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

This is the first case of an injured social guest to reach us since we abandoned resort to common-law classifications as the conclusive determinant of a land occupier's duty to entrants on property based on whether they were to be regarded as licensees, invitees, trespassers or members of any of their patchwork of subclassifications, adopting in its place a "single standard" under which liability is to be measured by what is "reasonable care under the circumstances" (Basso v. Miller, 40 N.Y.2d 233, 241, 386 N.Y.S.2d 564, 568, 352 N.E.2d 868, 872; Scurti v. City of New York, 40 N.Y.2d 433, 437, 387 N.Y.S.2d 55, 56, 354 N.E.2d 794, 795).

Plaintiff Loretta Quinlan, then a 17-year-old high school senior, fractured her skull when she fell down a flight of stairs in defendants' one-family house. At the conclusion of the testimony, the trial court took the case from the jury and dismissed it on the ground that Loretta and her father, the latter suing derivatively, failed to prove either any actionable negligence on the part of the defendants or Loretta's freedom from contributory negligence. ^* The Appellate Division affirmed on the ground that a social guest is to take "the premises as the quest finds them", a statement which, while categorically correct pre-Basso, is no longer the law. For the reasons which follow, we find that plaintiffs made out a prima facie case and that there must be a new trial.

To reach that determination, we turn first to the facts, viewing the evidence, as we must in the present procedural posture of the case, in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs (Parvi v. City of Kingston, 41 N.Y.2d 553, 394 N.Y.S.2d 161, 362 N.E.2d 960).

After school recessed on the day she was injured, Loretta accompanied her classmate Anna Cecchini to the home of Anna's parents, the defendants. The young ladies were going to attend a dance that evening and Loretta had been invited to spend the night at the Cecchini home. This was her first visit there. Upon their arrival at the Cecchini residence, they entered by the front door. After dining with Anna's parents, they drove to the dance and, returning at about 12:30 a. m., Anna led the way to the side entrance door which she proceeded to unlock. An outdoor light fixture alongside the door was not on; street lights provided the illumination which enabled Loretta to see the side of the house.

Upon being opened, the door swung toward the left into a small vestibule only about three feet square. Two light switches were located on the left vestibule wall against which the door came to rest; one switch controlled the overhead vestibule light and the other the outside light, but both switches were concealed and rendered inaccessible by the opening of the door. Opposite the entranceway were some steps leading up to the kitchen. As one faced into the vestibule from the outside, the edge of the top landing of a stairway leading to the basement was located at a point only four inches to the right of the vestibule. A qualified expert called by the plaintiffs characterized this arrangement as "architecturally unsound", particularly because of the door's obstruction of the switch which controlled the light that would have revealed the presence of the stairwell.

As Anna opened the side door, she let Loretta step into the vestibule first. There were no lights on in the house; the vestibule was, in Loretta's words, "pitch-dark". She "couldn't see anything" except the wall diagonally opposite the doorway and, accordingly, stood still on the right while waiting for Anna to enter. Though Loretta was then dangerously close to the staircase, the absence of light made her unaware of that fact. Then, as Anna entered on the left side of the vestibule, she inadvertently brushed against Loretta who "put one foot back" in order that Anna "would have more room", whereupon she fell down the stairs, losing consciousness as she struck the bottom.

In essence, four points are urged upon us by the defendants to sustain the dismissal. These are: that the unlit small vestibule with the open staircase adjacent to it was not a trap or hidden danger, that in any event the defendants acted with reasonable care under the circumstances, that the fall down the stairs was not the proximately produced result of the defendants' negligence and that plaintiff's own negligence was the cause of the occurrence.

If the traditional system of classifications still prevailed, since Loretta Quinlan was not a business visitor but only a social guest, we would be enmeshed in the decision of such questions as, for instance, whether the defendants afforded the plaintiff the protection owed to "the members of their own family" and perhaps how such a duty is to be applied pragmatical (Krause v. Alper, 4 N.Y.2d 518, 520, 176 N.Y.S.2d 349, 350, 151 N.E.2d 895, 896) or, as defendant suggests is pertinent here, whether or not the arrangement of the vestibule constituted a "trap or hidden danger" (Wilder v. Ayers, 2 A.D.2d 354, 156 N.Y.S.2d 85, affd., 3 N.Y.2d 725, 163 N.Y.S.2d 966, 143 N.E.2d 514). The "single standard of reasonable care" rule no longer so confines us. Our primary concern has now been shifted from the status of the plaintiff to the conduct of the defendant. Specifically, those facts which at one time might have tended to establish a "hidden danger" are now subsumed in the broader consideration of whether there has been reasonable care.

Similarly, the factual props which formerly determined status are not irrelevant in the determination of foreseeability and the expectation of care which a particular social guest would expect of a particular host (Peterson v. Balach, 294 Minn. 161, 199 N.W.2d 639; cf. Scurti v. City of New...