White v. Northwestern Bank Building Company

• Citation: 160 N.W.2d 545,281 Minn. 33
• Decision Date: 19 July 1968
• Docket Number: No. 40465,40465
• Parties: Helen M. WHITE, Respondent, v. NORTHWESTERN BANK BUILDING COMPANY, defendant and third-party plaintiff, Appellant, v. W. S. NOTT COMPANY, third-party defendant and fourth-party plaintiff, Respondent, v. PAGE BELTING COMPANY, fourth-party defendant, Respondent.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 545

160 N.W.2d 545

281 Minn. 33

Helen M. WHITE, Respondent, v. NORTHWESTERN BANK BUILDING COMPANY, defendant and third-party plaintiff, Appellant, v. W. S. NOTT COMPANY, third-party defendant and fourth-party plaintiff, Respondent, v. PAGE BELTING COMPANY, fourth-party defendant, Respondent.

No. 40465.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

July 19, 1968.

Syllabus by the Court

Where business establishment installed and maintained in otherwise safe condition upon its marble entryway during winter months a linked leather mat of common use and design, engineered with interstices for the prudent purpose of permitting drainage of excess moisture and avoiding creation of a slippery surface, Held, as a matter of law and notwithstanding injury caused to one of thousands of invitees traversing the mat, her shoe having become wedged in one such interstice, no unreasonable risk of harm had been created, and defendant could not be found negligent in failing to exercise reasonable care for the safety of invitees.

Carroll, Cronan, Roth & Austin and Frank X. Cronan, Minneapolis, for appellant.

Dorfman & Rudquist and John P. Karalis, Minneapolis, for Helen M. White.

Richards, Montgomery, Cobb & Bassford, Vincent E. Platt, and Greer E. Lockhart, Minneapolis, for W. S. Nott Co.

Mackall, Crounse, Moore, Helmey & Holmes, and Connor F. Schmid, Minneapolis, for Page Belting Co.

OPINION

PETERSON, Justice.

Plaintiff, Helen M. White, was injured in a fall upon a mat located in an entryway of the Northwestern National Bank, a building in downtown Minneapolis owned by defendant, Northwestern Bank Building Company (hereafter 'the bank'). A jury in Hennepin County District Court returned a verdict for plaintiff. Defendant moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial and appeals from the order denying its motion.

One of three entryways to the lobby of the bank is located at Seventh Street, just off Marquette Avenue. It is an open entryway, unheated and exposed to the elements. Because it is constructed of marble and slopes slightly toward the public sidewalk immediately adjacent to it, an obvious danger to pedestrians of slipping and falling would exist if ice, snow, or other moisture were to accumulate upon it. The bank, accordingly, had installed and maintained a leather mat over essentially the entire entryway, from the sidewalk to the point where various revolving doors provide entry into the large interior lobby. This mat is an place each year from November through early spring. In addition to space used by the banking business, there are a few commercial tenants on the main floor and numerous office tenants on the upper floors of this large building. By mutual arrangement between the bank and Donaldson's, a large department store adjacent to it, an entry leads from the interior lobby to the department store. Customer counts conducted by the bank establish that in 1958 some 10,000 persons passed through this mat-covered entryway daily and on some days as many as 15,000; like numbers of persons used the other two entryways to the bank.

Plaintiff's claim of actionable negligence is based on the allegation that the bank placed and maintained a 'defective, dangerous, and hazardous floor mat' upon the entryway floor. The mats covering this and the other entryways to the bank were designed and fitted for those entryways for the express purpose of preventing pedestrians from slipping and falling on the marble floor. ¹ The design and use of these mats was common in various other public buildings in Minneapolis and elsewhere. They were of leather link construction, with a corrugated surface, and lay flat on the floor surface. The mats were 5/8 of an inch thick and were engineered with interstices 'about a half-inch by five-eighths or three-quarters,' the express purpose of which was to permit the drainage of snow and moisture and to prevent formation of a slippery surface.

Plaintiff, a woman 54 years of age, used this entryway almost daily over a period of 8 to 10 years, either to do business at the bank or at Donaldson's. At about noon on January 16, 1958, she used it to go to and from Donaldson's, her place of employment being in the Investors Building located across the street from the bank. She was wearing shoes with a high heel. The height of the heel was approximately 2 1/2 inches. The bottom of the heel was rounded in the back and approximately 1/2 inch in diameter. The shoe was a dress shoe of moderate fashion at the time, but narrower heels up to 3 inches in height were not uncommon. As plaintiff proceeded across the entryway on her return route to her office, her heel became wedged in one of the interstices in the mat, as a result of which she fell and sustained injury. ²

The sole issue boils down to whether defendant was negligent in maintaining a mat containing interstices of this size rather than spaces of even smaller size and shape, or no spaces at all. There is no evidence that the bank was aware of any persons having fallen as a result of stepping into the interstices in the mat. ³ Mats of identical design had been maintained in these entryways for 23 years and had most recently been replaced in 1954, at a cost of $5,155. But for the existence of the 'holes,' there is no other claim of defective conditions in the entryway. The mat was clean and in good repair; there was no moisture or foreign matter on the mat; the mat lay flat.

The well-settled rule concerning the obligation of defendant, as a shopkeeper, to plaintiff, as an invitee, is undisputed: The bank is not an insurer of the safety of the plaintiff but does owe her the duty of reasonable care to maintain its premises in a safe condition. ⁴ The real question, rather, is whether reasonable care requires the bank to maintain a 'heel-proof' mat. Stated differently, does a jury verdict against the bank based only upon a showing that plaintiff fell because she stepped into a mat-hole have the effect of making the bank an insurer of her safety?

We hold that plaintiff has not established a case of actionable negligence against defendant, and that a jury verdict, based only upon the undoubted fact that plaintiff wedged her heel into a functional space in the mat, is insufficient to support the verdict against defendant. ⁵ The controlling principle of commonsense as stated in Mattson v. St Luke's Hospital, 252 Minn. 230, 233, 89 N.W.2d 743, 745, 71 A.L.R.2d 422, 425, is that '(t)he exercise of reasonable care for the safety of invitees requires neither the impossible nor the impractical.' Winter snow and ice are realities of Minnesota life with which one must cope but against which he cannot insure. Had defendant installed no mat or other device to protect pedestrians from slipping upon its surface, which ice and snow would obviously make hazardous, its negligence could hardly be doubted. Had it installed a mat upon which ice and snow could gather and compact into an equally slippery surface, its negligence would be equally apparent. Yet, were it to have installed a mat either without interstices or with interstices too small to create adequate drainage, that would have been virtually the inescapable result. But were it to have installed a mat with interstices large enough both to create complete drainage and to avoid wedging of heels of any common size worn by women, such spaces probably would have created a surface into which women's toes would stumble. It would be impractical and unrealistic to require in effect that the interstices in these mats must be re-engineered simultaneously with the changing fashions of women's footwear, particularly where there is no assurance that upwards of 15,000 women on any given day would wear shoes of the same fashion. The obvious necessities of the situation must be balanced against what, on this record, was a slight risk. Some risk there was that a woman's heel might 'go through' the 'hole,' as defendant's manager acknowledged, but that was not the same as a risk that a heel would become wedged in it and cause a pedestrain to fall and suffer serious injury. And, to the extent that such risk did exist, it seemingly would exist regardless of the shape or dimension of the interstice.

The situation existing as to mats of this kind is not unlike other major installations like cleats in esclators in buildings or storm drains, manholes, and gratings in the public way. It is quite unlike the situation, seemingly suggested by the trial court, which would exist if, Without functional reason a floor in an interior lobby were to be constructed with holes in it. Cf., Hastings v. F. W. Woolworth Co. Inc., 189 Minn. 523, 250 N.W. 362; Summer v. City of Northfield, 96 Minn. 107, 104 N.W. 686.

The precedents in other jurisdictions are, as the trial court noted, few. Plaintiff relies upon Blumberg v. M. & T. Inc., 34 Cal.2d 226, 209 P.2d 1, and Ramsey v. Mellon Nat. Bank & Trust Co. (W.D.Pa.) 231 F.Supp. 1. Defendant cites Robinson v. Southwestern Bell Tel. Co., 26 Ill.App.2d 139, 167 N.E.2d 793; Tolman v. Wieboldt Stores, Inc., 73 Ill.App.2d 320, 219 N.E.2d 560 (but reversed, 38 Ill.2d 519, 233 N.E.2d 33); McQuillan v. City of New Orleans (La.App.) 18 So.2d 218; Erbe v. Maes, 226 Wis. 484, 277 N.W. 111; and Bowerman v. Greenberg, 142 Neb. 721, 7 N.W.2d 711. Although the result in the more recent of these cases arguably supports plaintiff's position, we are persuaded to the opposite result.

The California decision in Blumberg v. M. & T. Inc., supra, which is factually in point, illustrates the difference of opinion among those jurisdictions. Plaintiff fell when her heel became wedged in one of the rectangular openings of a rubber mat placed on the terrazzo floor of the lobby in defendant's building. Plaintiff was wearing a shoe with a medium spike heel of the type worn by more than half of San Francisco's women, the lift of which was approximately seven-eighths of an inch in diameter. No claim was made that...