Home/Supreme Court of Minnesota/Guy v. Western Newspaper Union

Guy v. Western Newspaper Union

55 N.W.2d 298, 236 Minn. 20, 1952 Minn. LEXIS 619
CourtSupreme Court of Minnesota
DecidedFebruary 8, 1952
Docket35,596
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 55 N.W.2d 298 (Guy v. Western Newspaper Union) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Guy v. Western Newspaper Union, 55 N.W.2d 298, 236 Minn. 20, 1952 Minn. LEXIS 619 (Mich. 1952).

Opinion

Loring, Chief Justice.

In an action to recover damages for personal injuries, the court directed a verdict for defendant. Plaintiff moved for a new trial and appealed from the trial court’s denial of his motion.

The accident happened about three o’clock in the afternoon of January 12, 1949, a “half-sunshiny” day, with the temperature around freezing. Plaintiff had gone to defendant’s place of business on the west side of Chicago avenue, Minneapolis, to purchase supplies.

In front of the building was an entrance door, over which was a sign bearing defendant’s name, Western Newspaper Union. A short distance from the entrance door were two large doors with a threshold (a loading platform) approximately four feet above the sidewalk. Plaintiff had never before been in the building. He entered through the entrance door and went into defendant’s office, from where defendant’s salesman conducted him to a stockroom. Here, plaintiff purchased five lengths of wood called “printer’s furniture” and three sets of metal locking keys. To reach the stockroom, plaintiff passed through five doors altogether.

With the keys in his pocket and carrying the wood in his left hand, plaintiff accompanied the salesman to a wrapping counter, which was around the corner from the entrance to the office. Here, pointing toward the front of the building, plaintiff asked the salesman if he could get out that way. The salesman told him that he could. Plaintiff then proceeded past a door on his left (which would have taken him to the door through which he had entered) and went straight ahead to the two large double doors. The south half of the doors had to be opened before the other half because it overlapped the north half. There was no knob (such as is usually *22 found on exit doors) on either half; but plaintiff pulled a cord or chain, which hung down from a catch at the top. When the catch was released, the door swung open toward the inside, assisted, in part, by the wind. In plaintiff’s own words :

“* * * I turned with my left side toward the outside and turned completely around, so in doing so I had my back to the outside and in the act of closing the door I fell.”

He said that he was backing out as he fell the four feet from the threshold to the sidewalk. On the trial, plaintiff offered the following testimony as an explanation of his backing out of a strange door:

“* * * that the reason he proceeded to exit in the manner in which he did with his back to the east was that his left hand was holding the printer’s furniture and could not be used and the right hand was holding the edge of the south door which he was attempting to close and that was the only manner in which he could exit under the circumstances.”

The trial court held this testimony to be inadmissible; but, even if it had been admitted, no jury reasonably could have concluded that plaintiff was using due care. He had recognized that the doors were not the ordinary exit-entrance doors. 2 Being in a strange place when he saw these doors, which had no ordinary knob and were opened by pulling a cord attached to a catch, a reasonably prudent man should have been forewarned to look before backing out through them. Since the doors opened inwardly, looking offered no difficulty; and, since it was a reasonably bright day and the doors opened to the outside, the jury could have found only that if plaintiff had looked he would have seen the drop. His backing *24 through the doors without looking, in view of the warning given by the construction of the doors themselves, was contributory negligence as a matter of law. 3

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Related

Flynn v. Arcade Investment Co.
91 N.W.2d 113 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1958)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
55 N.W.2d 298, 236 Minn. 20, 1952 Minn. LEXIS 619, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/guy-v-western-newspaper-union-minn-1952.