Anderson v. Maneval

410 S.W.2d 578, 1966 Mo. App. LEXIS 512
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 16, 1966
DocketNo. 8563
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 410 S.W.2d 578 (Anderson v. Maneval) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Anderson v. Maneval, 410 S.W.2d 578, 1966 Mo. App. LEXIS 512 (Mo. Ct. App. 1966).

Opinion

HOGAN, Judge.

Plaintiff Charlton Anderson has recovered the sum of $12,000.00 for personal injuries sustained as the result of a fall from his truck while he was on defendant’s premises as a business visitor. The defendant has appealed, principally on the ground that plaintiff made no submissible case. The nature and extent of plaintiff’s injuries are not in dispute. At the time in question, the defendant operated a grain and feed supply business in Jasper, Missouri, and it is conceded that the premises upon which the casualty occurred were under his control. It is also conceded that, at least initially, the plaintiff was present as an invitee or business visitor.

Taken most favorably to the result reached, the record shows that, among other things, defendant grinds and mixes grain to his customers’ specifications. To obtain this service, the customer unloads his grain into a grain pit on the south side of the defendant’s elevator. This pit or bin is located below and adjacent to a dock or platform which is part of the elevator; it is covered by a rectangular steel grate. The floor of the platform is about four feet above the grate, and above the floor of the platform there is a doorway seven feet high and five feet wide, which is covered by a two-piece sliding door hung on the outside of the building on an overhead rail. Customers who have grain to be ground back their trucks up even with or slightly over the grate and unload their grain into the pit. With the truck in position for unloading, the floor of the elevator is level with and at right angles to the bed of the truck, so that the doorway is immediately behind the customer’s vehicle. In normal operation, the doors are opened by sliding them laterally along the overhead rail.

It was shown by the plaintiff that these doors had originally been a single overhead door, mounted on a vertical track so that it swung down and fastened at the bottom “like a garage door.” The original door, [580]*580when closed, had been fixed and stationary. Sometime before the accident — Mr. Mane-val testified it had been several years — the overhead door was “cut in two” and was made into sliding doors operated, as we have said, on a lateral track. At the time the sliding doors were installed, there had been a ledge or stop along the edge of the platform which “held the door firm,” but shortly afterward the stop was removed. Defendant’s explanation for the change in the height of the stop was that it had been too high to permit passage of a bulk feed cart which he used in connection with the grinding operation; consequently, a lower stop was installed. However, with the stop removed, the sliding doors, when closed, “swung in” at right angles to the track on which they were mounted. In any event, as we have noted, the doors had been in the condition in which plaintiff found them on the day of the accident for several years, and Mr. Anderson said that he had visited the premises regularly, “every ten days or two weeks,” for sixteen or seventeen years prior to his injury. Plaintiff testified that he was familiar with this type of sliding door because he had several of them “at home,” but he considered that such doors would be solid and “in the slot at the bottom.” There is no contention that the doorway covered by the sliding doors was regularly used as a means of entrance or exit from the building itself; rather, the evidence shows that the platform was ordinarily used simply as a loading dock.

Mr. Anderson testified that on February 9, 1963, he went to the defendant’s establishment “to get some calf feed and some hog feed ground.” Arriving “around eleven or a little after eleven o’clock [A.M.],” plaintiff drove first to the scales where the defendant weighed his truck. Plaintiff asked to exchange some ear corn for shell corn, and the defendant agreed. Mr. Anderson then went to a nearby “corn crib” and unloaded approximately half of his load. In the process, he removed the tail gate from his truck and placed it in the bed of the vehicle. Mr. Anderson then drove his truck back to the grain pit, parking the rear of his vehicle above and slightly over the grate so the rear of the bed of his truck was level with and “two feet or a little better” away from the floor of the dock. Plaintiff testified that although the doors had always been open before, or had been opened by defendant’s employees before he finished unloading, they were closed and remained so on this occasion.

After he parked his truck, plaintiff climbed into the bed of the vehicle and unloaded his corn into the grain pit. It was then plaintiff’s intention to get out of the bed of his truck, go around to the scales for another weight, and pick up his load of mixed feed at the south side of the elevator. Ordinarily, in dismounting from his truck, that is, when the sliding doors were open, plaintiff “reached down * * * put my hands on the floor of the elevator, my left hand on the floor of the elevator, my right hand on the floor of the truck, lowering] myself down over this grate onto the grate and go around and get into the cab.” On this occasion, since the doors were closed, the plaintiff took what seemed to him the easiest and safest way to get down, and “ * * * squatted down in the back to get out, it was quite a little ways on down to the floor of the elevator where this little ledge was that was solid, so I reached out for a little bit of support against the door and when I touched the door, it just swung away from me,” “quite a little ways.” Plaintiff “went out head first,” and sustained the injuries of which he complains.

Plaintiff also had evidence designed or intended to show that the ordinary and usual way for a customer to dismount from a truck, after dumping grain into the grain pit, was to get out the back of his truck. The force and effect of this evidence is in dispute, and we shall return to it in the course of the opinion.

On this appeal, the parties have briefed and vigorously argued a number of [581]*581points, but in the view we take of the case it is necessary to consider only the defendant’s assignment that plaintiff made no submissible case. Specifically, the defendant’s point is that he was not liable, inasmuch as the plaintiff was using the premises (the sliding doors) for a purpose other than that for which they were intended and in a manner which could not reasonably have been anticipated. We do not understand the plaintiff to contend that the sliding doors were unsafe for use as doors, nor is there any evidence tending to support such a contention; the plaintiff’s theory of submission, as we understand it, and concisely put, was that the defendant should reasonably have anticipated that plaintiff would use the sliding doors as a means of support in getting off his truck, and that defendant was negligent in failing to make the doors reasonably safe for that purpose. Since the question whether a submissible case was made is inherent in every appeal,1 we proceed to a consideration of that question, reviewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the plaintiff and giving him the benefit of all inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom. Kettler v. Hampton, Mo., 365 S.W.2d 518, 521 [1]; King v. Ellis, Mo., 359 S.W.2d 685, 687 [1].

As the respondent correctly contends, the broad principle governing this appeal is not in dispute.

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Bluebook (online)
410 S.W.2d 578, 1966 Mo. App. LEXIS 512, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/anderson-v-maneval-moctapp-1966.