Home/Sixth Circuit/Richard F. Gugel, Sr. v. Sears, Roebuck & Company, a New York Corporation

Richard F. Gugel, Sr. v. Sears, Roebuck & Company, a New York Corporation

308 F.2d 131, 1962 U.S. App. LEXIS 4198
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedAugust 31, 1962
Docket14689
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 308 F.2d 131 (Richard F. Gugel, Sr. v. Sears, Roebuck & Company, a New York Corporation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Richard F. Gugel, Sr. v. Sears, Roebuck & Company, a New York Corporation, 308 F.2d 131, 1962 U.S. App. LEXIS 4198 (6th Cir. 1962).

Opinions

STARR, Senior District Judge.

The plaintiff-appellee began this action in the circuit court of Saginaw County, Michigan, to recover damages resulting from his personal injuries sustained when he fell into an open grease pit in defendant-appellant’s service garage, maintained in connection with its retail store in the city of Saginaw. The action was removed to the Federal court on the basis of diversity of citizenship and jurisdictional amount involved. It was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict for plaintiff in the amount of $7,850, upon which judgment was entered. Defendant-appellant appeals, contending that the district court erred in denying its motion for a directed verdict and submitting to the jury the questions of its negligence and plaintiff-appellee’s contributory negligence, and also erred in denying its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The parties will hereinafter be referred to as plaintiff and defendant.

[132]*132The facts relating to this accident may briefly be stated as follows: On January 24, 1959, at about 1:30 in the afternoon the plaintiff went to defendant’s retail store in Saginaw to purchase a television set, parking his car on the street beside the store. When he returned to his car, he was unable to start it because the battery was dead. He then went to defendant’s service garage adjoining its store to obtain help in starting it.

There were four open grease pits for the lubrication of cars, located in about the center of the service garage, arranged and spaced as shown in plaintff’s exhibit 1 attached hereto. Each of the pits was about 6 feet deep, 15 feet and [133]*13311 inches long, and 42 inches wide, and around the edge of each pit was a steel rim painted red, extending about 4 inches above the surface of the floor. The area-way or distance between the sides of pits 1 and 2 and between the sides of pits 8 and 4 was 72% inches, and the distance between the ends of pits 1 and 3 and the ends of pits 2 and 4 was 49 inches. The service garage was about 81 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 12 feet high, and was lighted by 15 to 20 300-watt light bulbs hanging about 6 inches below the ceiling. Each of the grease pits was lighted from within by several 150-watt light bulbs. When plaintiff entered the service garage, there were cars over all four grease pits.

[132]*132

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Richard F. Gugel, Sr. v. Sears, Roebuck & Company, a New York Corporation
308 F.2d 131 (Sixth Circuit, 1962)

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Bluebook (online)
308 F.2d 131, 1962 U.S. App. LEXIS 4198, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/richard-f-gugel-sr-v-sears-roebuck-company-a-new-york-corporation-ca6-1962.