Union Storage Co. v. McIntyre

• Decision Date: 17 September 1969
• Docket Number: No. 4488.,4488.
• Citation: 256 A.2d 787
• Parties: UNION STORAGE CO., Inc., Appellant, v. John D. McINTYRE et al., Appellees.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

256 A.2d 787

UNION STORAGE CO., Inc., Appellant, v. John D. McINTYRE et al., Appellees.

No. 4488.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued March 24, 1909.

Decided September 17, 1069.

William F. Reed, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Harry L. Ryan, Jr., Washington, D. C., for appellees.

Before HOOD, Chief Judge, and KERN and GALLAGHER, Associate Judges.

KERN, Associate Judge:

Appellees sued appellant, a warehouseman in the District of Columbia, for the value of certain furniture and household items which they had stored with it. The trial court sitting without a jury heard evidence that shortly before dawn on Sunday, February 16, 1964, a deranged¹ police officer, while on duty, reached between the iron bars² covering a ground floor window in appellant's warehouse located at 628 0 Street, N.W., removed a protective wiremesh screen wired to the window frame, broke a pane in the window and poured burning trash through it. He continued to feed the flame he had started until the fire caught onto material stored near the window, travelled to an elevator shaft ten feet away and spread up the shaft to the third floor where appellees' property was stored. All of their property was destroyed by the fire despite the fact that an automatic fire alarm located in the warehouse was triggered by the fire and the policeman himself turned in an alarm from an alarm box on the street.

Appellant's building was constructed entirely of concrete and brick and had metal-covered fire doors separating the different floors. Appellant employed a guard service to inspect the building from the outside at fixed hourly intervals during the time it was not open for business.

The trial court entered judgment for appellees in the amount of their claim for $1,250 after finding that appellant was negligent upon the stated grounds that it did not have a watchman inside its warehouse at all times and that the wire mesh "wasn't of proper security for the protection of that window" in the warehouse. The trial court also concluded that the absence of an inside watchman and the failure to have the wire mesh securely attached constituted the proximate cause of the fire and the resultant destruction of appellees' goods. Appellant argues that the evidence does not support the trial court's finding of negligence on its part and that in any event such negligence was not the proximate cause of appellees' loss.

The standard of care which a warehouseman must meet in the District of Columbia is that which a reasonably careful owner of similar goods would have exercised.³ Therefore, appellant was under a duty to exercise reasonable care in the storage of appellees' property. In showing that it met its responsibility appellant presented evidence that the warehouse was of fire resistant construction, the fire alarm system in the warehouse was effectively operating, police and fireman service were near since the warehouse was in the heart of the city and easily visible to casual passers-by, a patrol at fixed intervals around the outside of the warehouse was provided continually during the time appellant was not open for business, and iron bars as well as wire-mesh screening wired to the frames covered the windows in the warehouse on the ground floor. In view of this uncontradicted evidence adduced by appellant, it is our opinion that the mere fact that no watchman was inside the warehouse at all times was insufficient to show lack of reasonable care on the part of appellant. Bellows v. Worcester Storage Co., 297 Mass. 188, 7 N.E.2d 588 (1937); Luke v. Security Storage & Van Co., 24 So.2d 692 (La.App. 1946). Compare Denning Warehouse Co. v. Widener, 172 F.2d 910, 13 A.L.R.2d 669 (10th Cir. 1949).

The other fact relied upon by the trial court to support its finding of negligence was that the wire screening constituted inadequate security for the warehouse. The trial court concluded it was inadequate because it "was easily pulled off" and was something "any...