Sterns v. Highland Hotel Co.

• Decision Date: 30 October 1940
• Citation: 29 N.E.2d 721,307 Mass. 90
• Parties: MARION STERNS v. HIGHLAND HOTEL COMPANY.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

307 Mass. 90

29 N.E.2d 721

MARION STERNS v. HIGHLAND HOTEL COMPANY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Hampden.

October 30, 1940

September 19, 1940.

Present: FIELD, C.

J., DONAHUE, QUA COX, & RONAN, JJ.

Negligence Revolving door. Proximate Cause.

Injuries, sustained by an elderly woman guest who fell as she was leaving a hotel through a revolving door of standard make, not defective with no attendant at hand, when one entering through the door accelerated its speed and caused it to push her so that she lost her balance in stepping down an obvious step close to the outside of the door, could not rightly be found to have been caused by negligence of the proprietor of the hotel.

TORT. Writ in the Superior Court dated July 31, 1936. The case was tried before Broadhurst, J., and in this court was submitted on briefs.

R. W. Crowell &amp T.

B. Moriarty, for the plaintiff.

I. R. Shaw & J.

A. Anderson, Jr., for the defendant.

COX, J. The sole question in this case is whether the trial judge was in error in directing a verdict for the defendant.

The jury could have found that on the day of her injury, the plaintiff, a retired school teacher, seventy-six years of age, admittedly an invitee of the defendant, entered its hotel in Springfield by the main entrance on Hillman Street and was injured as she was leaving by the same entrance an half hour later. The floor level of this entrance, where there is a revolving door, is approximately four and one half inches higher than the sidewalk on Hillman Street, and this door is so placed that when any of its four panels is at right angles with the sidewalk, the rubber strip, one and one half inches wide, on the edge of the panel, is five and one half inches in from the edge of the step from Hillman Street. The plaintiff testified that, as they were leaving the lobby of the hotel her niece entered the revolving door first and she followed in the next quadrant. When she had proceeded half-way or a little more through the door, one or two men on their way into the hotel entered the quadrant that had been occupied by her niece. "The door was given a push by this man or one of them, causing the back panel of the quadrant by which the plaintiff was leaving to strike . . . [her] in the back, causing her speed . . . to be accelerated; she was pushed forward and as she stepped out of the door, her foot went beyond the level space in front of the door . . . down onto the sidewalk, causing her to lose her footing and fall . . . ." She further testified that she fell "after she had left the door and that the cause of the fall was that she had no place to put her foot after she left the door except in the `thin air.'" There was no doorman "tending" the door, nor were there any handles on the revolving wings, although there were two brass push bars on each panel. The door was of a standard make with a maximum opening between the wings of three feet seven inches, and when it was open for maximum "ease" of exit the distance from the edge of the outer step to the door panel behind one who is leaving varies from twenty-seven to forty inches. Each revolving panel is thirty-six inches wide and contains a light of transparent glass eighteen inches wide extending from within twenty-three inches of the bottom of the panel to approximately the same distance from the top. The permanent circular wings of the door are each equipped with a transparent glass panel. There was no evidence tending to prove any defect in the revolving mechanism of the door or any defect with respect to its rubber strips.

The plaintiff contends that the entrance in question was not in a reasonably safe condition. She concedes that the drop of four and one half inches to the sidewalk "might not be considered dangerous when so located with respect to an ordinary swinging door"; that whether she would have fallen if her speed had not been accelerated is unknown, but that the possibility of this acceleration was a factor that the defendant should have reasonably anticipated; that the failure to have a doorman in attendance or to provide the door with grab bars is no evidence of negligence,

"providing however, that the door is properly constructed, located and maintained." In short, the plaintiff contends that the door was improperly located and that its proximity to the edge of the step to the sidewalk created a danger that was increased by the acceleration of her speed in passing through the door; that this speed could have been controlled by a doorman or by the use of grab bars which also would have afforded the plaintiff an opportunity of steadying herself before leaving the door and stepping to the sidewalk.

The defendant's duty to the plaintiff was to exercise reasonable care to keep its premises in a reasonably safe condition for her use according to the invitation, or, at least, to warn her against any dangers attendant upon such use that were not known to her or obvious to an ordinarily intelligent person, and either were known or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have been known to the defendant. Lord v. Lowell Institution for Savings, 304 Mass. 212 , 215, and cases cited.

It is a matter of common observation that in "entering and leaving stores, halls, . . . office buildings, and other buildings . . . adjoining surfaces are frequently at different levels, and the difference in level has to be overcome by one or more steps of greater or less height or by some other device. . . . We cannot think that such a construction is of itself defective or negligent." Ware v. Evangelical Baptist Benevolent & Missionary Society of Boston, 181 Mass. 285 , 286. It was said by Rugg, J., in Hoyt v. Woodbury, 200 Mass. 343 , at page 345: "Persons entering . . . [the defendant's] building were charged with knowledge that they were not entering from a perfectly level sidewalk, and that generally the floors of buildings are not of precisely the same elevation as the sidewalk, even where it is level. Customers entering or leaving stores cannot be unmindful of these almost universally prevailing conditions. Owners of buildings have a right to proceed in their constructions in view of this common observation on the part of the public and assume in the actions of those who may frequent their buildings the exercise of ordinary circumspection as to their footing." Steps of greater or less height are the usual, but not the only, means of overcoming such differences in levels, and it is the general rule in this Commonwealth that, in the absence of some unusual condition, by the employment of a step for such a purpose the landowner violates no duty to his invitees. Hoyt v. Woodbury, 200 Mass. 343 , 345, 346. See Lord v. Sherer Dry Goods Co. 205 Mass. 1; Rynn v. Fox-New England Theatres, Inc. 299 Mass. 258, 260, and cases cited.

The door was of standard make, of a kind in common use, with no evidence of any defect in its condition, and there was nothing to show that it was not entirely safe when properly used by persons passing through. Smith v. Johnson, 219 Mass. 142 . Buzzell v. R. H. White Co. 220 Mass. 129 . It was said in the Smith case, which was one involving a swinging door, at pages 142 and 143: "If . . . the ordinary speed of the door was increased by another customer negligently...