Wilson v. Goodrich
| Decision Date | 16 January 1934 |
| Docket Number | No. 42098.,42098. |
| Citation | 218 Iowa 462,252 N.W. 142 |
| Parties | WILSON v. GOODRICH. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Clayton County; H. E. Taylor, Judge.
An action for personal injuries resulting from a fall down an elevator shaft in a poultry house or produce plant. There was a directed verdict for the defendant, and plaintiff appeals.
Affirmed.
Alex Holmes, of Strawberry Point, for appellant.
Kenline, Roedell, Hoffmann & Tierney, of Dubuque, for appellee.
This is an action for damages for personal injury resulting to plaintiff by reason of falling into an elevator shaft. The plaintiff is a physician and surgeon in Strawberry Point, Clayton county, Iowa. The defendant is engaged in the business of buying poultry and eggs from farmers and merchants and reconditioning them for the eastern market. He has been engaged in this business at Strawberry Point since 1913. He employed about forty-five people in his produce plant, and carried compensation insurance. The plaintiff's office was almost immediately across the street south from the produce plant. During the four years next preceding the accident involved in this case he had treated some twenty-five of the defendant's employees for accidents and infections due to their work in the produce plant. Other physicians had also treated employees of the defendant. The plaintiff was not a regular physician employed by the defendant. When an injury occurred or an infection developed, the afflicted employee selected his own doctor, who was always paid by the company carrying the compensation insurance. The defendant had nothing to do with the selection or payment of any of the doctors. At the time of the accident the plaintiff had been treating two of the defendant's employees for infected hands resulting from chicken picking operations in the plant. These employees had gone to the plaintiff voluntarily and without any suggestion or direction from the defendant. On the morning of the accident to plaintiff which occurred on the 29th day of June, 1931, the plaintiff called at the office of the defendant in the produce building for the purpose of obtaining blanks to make reports to the insurance company upon the cases of two employees he had been treating. Usually these blanks were furnished by the defendant to the employee, and the employee took them to the doctor's office. This was apparently the first occasion upon which the doctor called at the plant for these blanks. He claims that the reports were overdue and that he had phoned to the office on two prior occasions asking that they send the blanks over to him. It was no part of the defendant's business or duty to furnish the blanks for the doctor's reports, but he had done so in some instances in the past. After securing the blanks from the office, he claims he asked a lady secretary if the two men were working, and that she told him they were working back in the picking room. He then left the office and, as he claims, started back through the produce building toward the picking room to interview the men and obtain some information from them in order to complete his reports to the insurance company. Nothing was said in the office by the doctor that he desired or that it was necessary for him to interview the men or that he was going back to see them. He claims that on his way back through the building to the picking room he walked into an open, unguarded, and unlighted elevator shaft and fell eight feet to the floor below and received serious injury.
The building in question is approximately forty feet wide and two hundred feet long. It faces south upon one of the streets of the city, extending north practically two hundred feet. The main entrance to the building is near the center on the south, and immediately inside of the entrance and to the right are the offices of the defendant. The main entrance opens into a workroom some forty feet long and about twenty-five feet wide. North of the office rooms on the east side of the building is a storeroom and engine room. Almost directly north from the main entrance to the building is a sliding door five feet wide which opens into another workroom about eighteen feet wide and twenty-eight feet long. North of this workroom and on the west side of the building is what is known as a weighroom about twenty-eight feet long and fifteen feet wide. There are two folding doors each two feet wide opening from the workroom immediately north into the weighroom, and approximately in the northeast corner of the weighroom is an elevator shaft six feet square extending from the basement of the building to the second floor. This elevator shaft is equipped with sliding gate on the south side adjacent to the weighroom, and with sliding gate and folding doors on the north side. Immediately adjacent to the elevator shaft on the west, and in the northwesterly corner of the weighroom, is a sliding door about five feet wide, opening into the picking room. Immediately east from the weighroom is a large storeroom, and north of that, and immediately east of the picking room, is another large room also used for storage purposes. Between the two last-described rooms is a door five feet wide and from the last-described room is a six-foot opening to the picking room. The weighroom has two windows in the west wall and a sliding door six feet wide where poultry and eggs are delivered to the plant by farmers and others selling their produce to the defendant. This large door is inclosed in the wintertime by sliding solid wood doors; in the summertime it is inclosed with a sliding door made out of chicken wire for the purpose of permitting light to enter the weighroom and prevent chickens from escaping therefrom. Immediately in front or south of the south elevator shaft opening in the weighroom, there was suspended from the ceiling a twenty-five watt electric light, which was lighted continually. In the workroom immediately south of the weighroom, on the morning of the accident the undisputed testimony shows there were piles of lumber, egg cases, and chicken crate material extending from the west wall the entire width of the weighroom and as high as the ceiling. Two or three feet from the south partition wall of the weighroom, an opening or alleyway some three feet wide and running east and west had been left for the convenience of the workmen in going to and from the weighroom. There was an alley or passageway some six or eight feet wide running north from near the front of the building and along the east wall of the weighroom to the five-foot opening into the back storage room, and this alley or passageway was used by the workmen and others in going from the front of the building back to the picking room. This alley or passageway was well lighted by natural light coming through several windows on the east side of the building, and near the opening between the two northerly storerooms there was an electric light suspended from the ceiling; and immediately north of this and at the entrance to the picking room was another electric light suspended from the ceiling which was always lighted during the daytime. At the time of the accident there were about twenty-five men working in the picking room and no one was working in the weighroom. When the doctor came out of the office on the morning of the accident, there was apparently presented to him a wide and well-lighted passageway by which he could have reached the picking room. This was the usual and ordinary way used by all of the workmen and others who desired to go from the front of the building to the picking room in the rear. The other way which the doctor claims he followed was through the narrow three-foot alley between the piles of lumber to the west and then north through a small two-foot door into the weighroom, and then north to the five-foot door immediately west of the elevator shaft and leading into the picking room. The doctor claims that when he passed through the first opening after leaving the office he saw what he thought was a light in the picking room shining through a partially open door. He claims that he walked towards this light, and that it developed that the light was shining through the elevator shaft through the partially open doors on the north side; that he did not know that the elevator shaft was there, and that he walked toward the light and fell into the shaft. From the plan of the ground floor of the produce building which is introduced in evidence, it appears that it was physically impossible for the doctor to have seen the lights shining through the elevator shaft as he claims, until, at least, he had entered the weighroom. The lumber and material piled immediately south of the door leading...
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