Abel v. White

430 So. 2d 202
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedApril 4, 1983
DocketCA 0013
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 430 So. 2d 202 (Abel v. White) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Abel v. White, 430 So. 2d 202 (La. Ct. App. 1983).

Opinion

430 So.2d 202 (1983)

E. Homer ABEL, Jr.
v.
Mr. & Mrs. Glenn WHITE, the Heritage Insurance Company, D.H. Holmes Company, Ltd. and ABC Insurance Company.

No. CA 0013.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.

April 4, 1983.

*203 George C. Stringer, Jr., Harahan, for plaintiff-appellant.

John G. Miller, Jr., Leon A. Aucoin, Mark D. Kuss, Bailey & Leininger, Metairie, for defendant-appellee.

Before REDMANN, C.J., and BARRY and BYRNES, JJ.

REDMANN, Chief Judge.

Plaintiff appeals from the dismissal of a department store and his own uninsured motorist insurer from his action for damages from being injured by an automobile on the sidewalk at the entrance to the store's parking garage.

We affirm as to the department store but reverse as to the uninsured motorist insurer.

The Department Store

Plaintiff's theory of the department store's liability is that it forced plaintiff to use a dangerous exit, without supervising and controlling "automobiles entering from a bright street into a dark, narrow driveway...."

The basic facts are that plaintiff worked for a furrier that had a contract with the department store for the storage, repair and delivery of furs. Plaintiff's family owned the furrier business. The furrier had previously used a freight elevator located at the back entrance to the store. Three or four months before the accident, the store directed the furrier to use instead an elevator located in its parking garage. The only ground-level access to and from the garage was also used by automobiles.

*204 Plaintiff testified that he used that new route twice or thrice weekly for over three months, and that he often was nearly hit by automobiles. He was therefore aware of the allegedly dangerous condition and the department store is thus not liable as a premises owner. Poche v. Maryland Cas. Co., 407 So.2d 1237 (La.App. 4 Cir.1982), writ denied 412 So.2d 1095.

Furthermore, as the trial judge pointed out, this is not a case like Chaney v. Brupbacher, 242 So.2d 627 (La.App. 4 Cir.1970), in which a subordinate employee is ordered into danger, not inevitable in his work, by a supervisor aware of that danger, when the employee has no alternative but to accept the unnecessary danger or be fired. Plaintiff knew that the department store could not fire him, and he had no reason to suppose that his father and brother would fire him from the family furrier business for refusing to follow an unnecessarily dangerous exit route from the department store. Thus, if the store were deemed negligent for ordering plaintiff to exit through the garage, plaintiff could be held contributorily negligent (as to the store) for complying with the store's order.

Perhaps most in point is another part of the trial judge's reasoning: "The fact is that neither plaintiff nor [department store] management had reason to anticipate that [the automobile driver] would negligently strike the fur rack knocking plaintiff down."

We conclude that the department store cannot be held liable.

The Uninsured Motorist Insurer

The issues as to the insurer are whether plaintiff's appeal was timely; whether plaintiff resided in Texas or had moved to Louisiana at the time of the pertinent renewal of the insurance policy; if plaintiff moved to Louisiana after the renewal policy was issued, whether Louisiana law thereupon superimposed underinsured motorist coverage upon the policy, and if it did not, whether the policy language nevertheless entitles plaintiff to recover on the basis that the tortfeasant automobile driver was "uninsured" within the policy definition; if so, whether quantum exceeds the $5,000 plaintiff has already recovered and whether "stacking" is applicable.

We reject the insurer's contention that, as to the insurer, plaintiff did not appeal within the 60 days allowed by La.C. C.P. 2087. This contention is based on plaintiff's original brief's having described his appeal as against the dismissal of the department store, and not having briefed the insurer's liability. Neither circumstance defeats the appeal as to the insurer.

First, to appeal, C.C.P. 2121 requires no more than the obtaining of an order of appeal. Only to answer an appeal does C.C.P. 2133 require "stating the relief demanded." Montelepre Memorial H. v. Kambur, 170 So.2d 214 (La.App. 4 Cir.1964), cited by the insurer, is not authority to the contrary because there the plaintiff, denied review of the dismissal of one defendant, did not appeal at all.

Second, while failure to brief a contention may be deemed an abandonment of that contention, plaintiff expressly negated abandonment here by seeking leave to file a supplemental brief as to the UM insurer prior to the case's being submitted for decision by this court.

We conclude that the timely appeal constituted an appeal from the entirety of the judgment, and that the question of the insurer's liability was not abandoned.

Plaintiff theorizes that, notwithstanding that his Texas insurance policy does not by its terms provide underinsured motorist insurance, Louisiana law obliges it to do so. The parties argue choice of law but we find no conflict of laws that would affect the result under the facts of this case. Louisiana law as applied to those facts does not afford underinsured motorist coverage to plaintiff.

Those facts are that plaintiff resided and worked in Texas when he there obtained the automobile insurance policy at issue. Although plaintiff testified that he moved to Louisiana from his native Texas on August *205 3, 1974, and that he went in person to his insurer's office (inside plaintiff's credit union office) a week or two earlier to advise the insurer (as well as the credit union) of his intended move, the trial judge reasoned that Louisiana law could not fairly be applied to impose underinsured motorist coverage upon "this Texas policy when the assured moved to Louisiana during its term," which began October 12, 1974. The trial judge evidently did not believe plaintiff's self-serving testimony, to support which plaintiff offered two documents. The first was his cancelled check on a Texas bank, dated October 14 and deposited October 22 and payable to the Texas credit union, upon which check plaintiff's printed Texas address was lined through and his Louisiana address was handwritten by his wife. The second document was a "periodic statement" from the Texas credit union, showing transactions through December 31, 1974, and showing that at least after December 31 the credit union was mailing its "periodic statements" direct to plaintiff's Louisiana address. We can only conclude that the trial judge deemed the handwritten address on the check as no less self-serving than plaintiff's testimony, because the time of its being written there was not independently established (as, e.g., by bank photocopy from the time of its processing); and that he may even have inferred that no "periodic statement" earlier than December 31 was introduced because they did not contain the Louisiana address. We further note that the insurer mailed the renewal premium notice in 1974 to plaintiff's Texas address (as it did in 1975 as well, although it thereafter reissued the notice in 1975 to plaintiff's Louisiana address).

We simply are not in a position to reverse the trial judge's credibility evaluation, Canter v. Koehring, 283 So.2d 716 (La.1973), and we therefore accept that plaintiff did not prove that he had moved to Louisiana prior to the insurer's renewal of his policy effective October 12, 1974.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Champagne v. Ward
893 So. 2d 773 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 2005)
Rains v. Jones
890 So. 2d 747 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 2004)
Bell v. Farmer's Ins. Group
635 So. 2d 1305 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1994)
McLemore v. Fox
565 So. 2d 1031 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1990)
Williams v. STATE FARM MUT. AUTO. INS.
524 So. 2d 851 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1988)
George v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.
471 So. 2d 974 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1985)
Cobb v. Burke
469 So. 2d 1221 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1985)
Snider v. Murray
461 So. 2d 1051 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1985)
Armstrong v. Land & Marine Applicators, Inc.
463 So. 2d 1327 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1984)
Bloodworth v. Carroll
455 So. 2d 1197 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1984)
Snider v. Kemper Ins. Co.
448 So. 2d 1383 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1984)
Wilson v. State Farm Ins. Co.
448 So. 2d 1379 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1984)
Richard v. Beacon Nat. Ins. Co.
442 So. 2d 875 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1983)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
430 So. 2d 202, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/abel-v-white-lactapp-1983.