Steer v. Orleans Parish School Bd.

• Citation: 92 So.2d 128
• Decision Date: 14 January 1957
• Docket Number: No. 20765,20765
• Parties: Mrs. Dorothy Rice STEER, Wife of and Charles B. Steer, v. ORLEANS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana (US)

Page 128

92 So.2d 128

Mrs. Dorothy Rice STEER, Wife of and Charles B. Steer, v. ORLEANS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD.

No. 20765.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Orleans.

Jan. 14, 1957.

Dodd, Hirsch, Barker & Meunier, Thomas J. Meunier, New Orleans, and Sargent Pitcher, Baton Rouge, for plaintiffs and appellants.

Samuel I. Rosenberg, New Orleans, for defendant and appellee.

McBRIDE, Judge.

Mrs. Dorothy Rice Steer, who was authorized by Act No. 594 of 1954, p. 1096, to file this suit, seeks to recover a large sum to compensate her for personal injuries which she allegedly sustained as the result of a fall in a ladies' dressing room in the L. E. Rabouin Public School in New Orleans on the morning of October 24, 1953. Her husband joins her in the suit and endeavors to recover his losses incurred by reason of his wife's injuries. The suit was dismissed in the court below after due trial on the merits and the plaintiffs have taken this appeal.

The gravamen of the complaint is that the accident occurred because of a vice or defect in the construction of the building 'especially without the proper safeguards of coloring and lighting to attract attention to it.' The Orleans Parish School Board denies the existence of any vice of defect in the construction of the school building, denies the insufficiency of the lighting, and alternatively pleads that Mrs. Steer was guilty of contributory negligence.

Mrs. Steer entered the dressing room from a hallway, it being necessary for her to step up from the hall surface to the higher level of the rest room floor. Inside the room the floor is on one level until it reaches a point near an exit where it drops 8 1/2 inches to a lower level. This creates a rectangular-shaped 'well' surrounding the exit door. The floor is composed of grey colored terrazzo with a sill or border of similar color but of a darker hue about the edge of the well. We are told by the architects that the floor was so constructed to accommodate the drain pipes from the toilet facilities which are embedded in the elevated portion. Mrs. Steer encountered the step off and fell from the higher to the lower level in attempting to pass between the row of toilet booths and a lady who was standing in the room.

The question of the adequacy of the lighting in the room came in for considerable discussion. A friend of Mrs. Steer, a Mrs. Hatcher, who was present when the accident happened, testified that the day was bleak and dismal. When asked whether the electric lights were on, the witness said:

'I walked in there and saw everybody standing in there, and I walked in there, too, but it was, you know,-- I didn't look for any lights or anything, but I just knew it was dark and dim,--not dark like nighttime but just dim.'

Mrs. Steer was asked on direct examination whether the overhead electric lights in the room were turned on and her reply to the question was:

'I don't know, but I think so. I think so, but I wouldn't say for certain, Mr. Meunier.'

There is testimony emanating from a witness for the School Board that on the morning in question before the accident happened he had turned on the lights in the dressing room and that after the occurrence of the accident the electric lights were still burning.

But the question of electric lighting vel non assumes no importance because we are satisfied from the expert evidence that even on a heavily-overcast day natural light amounting to 25 candle power enters the room by virtue of a frosted door and the windows over the toilets. Buse, an electrical engineer, testified that 10 candle power is sufficient.

It is not necessary to discuss whether LSA--C.C. art. 2322 has application because we do not think that the damage which may have befallen plaintiffs was due to any vice in the original construction of the school building per se. We have before us the evidence of two experienced architects, one of whom appeared on behalf of the plaintiffs and the other for defendant, and their testimony makes it certain that at the time the building was erected, 1936 or 1937, and at the present time, there was and is no provision of the Building Code of the City of New Orleans which prohibited or prohibits such a floor as that in the dressing room in question. Wilson, plaintiffs' architect, could point to no Code violation but maintained that the two-level floor creates a dangerous situation. He admitted that such conditions are to be seen in some old buildings and he went on further to concede that some architects to the present day use such methods of construction. During the progress of the trial Wilson was asked by defendant's counsel to make an inspection of and...