Parker v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.

161 S.E. 209, 201 N.C. 691, 1931 N.C. LEXIS 70

• Court: Supreme Court of North Carolina
• Decided: November 25, 1931
• Status: Published

Opinion

BkoodeN, J.

The fact that a floor is oiled constitutes no evidence of negligence. Oiling is both customary and necessary, particularly in stores of the type and character described in the evidence. Nor does the more fact that a customer falls in a store constitute evidence of negligence for the reason that judicial utterances upon the subject concur in the view that res ipsa loquitur does not apply to injuries resulting from slipping or falling, occasioned by the presence of grease or oil upon the floors of a store.

Considering the evidence in the case at bar with that liberality which the law requires, it would appear as a reasonable inference that the floor was not properly oiled, in that oil had been permitted to accumulate on the floor at a place where customers were invited to inspect the merchandise displayed. The ultimate question is whether the evidence brings the case within the rules of liability heretofore announced in Bowden v. Kress, 198 N. C., 559, 152 S. E., 625. The Court is of the opinion that there was some evidence of negligence to be submitted to the jury, and bence Bowden v. Kress, supra, would govern.

The defendant undertook to show that three hundred customers entered the store on the day plaintiff fell, and that no one else sustained injury. Doubtless this evidence was offered for the purpose of refuting the theory that the floor was improperly oiled. The trial judge excluded the evidence, but it appears from a notation in the record that counsel on each side, without objection, argued to the jury that there were three hundred people present in the store on the day plaintiff was injured. So that, if it be conceded that the excluded evidence was competent, nevertheless, the defendant had the full benefit of every inference which could be drawn from such testimony.

There are other exceptions in the record, but a careful examination of them fails to produce the conviction that substantial error was committed in the admission of evidence.

No error.