William S. Cooper v. William R. Goodwin

478 F.2d 653, 155 U.S. App. D.C. 449, 1973 U.S. App. LEXIS 11704

• Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
• Decided: February 12, 1973
• Docket: 71-1100
• Status: Published

Opinions

BAZELON, Chief Judge:

This is an appeal from a directed verdict for the appellees on appellant Cooper’s claim that he was injured by reason of Mr. and Mrs. William Goodwin’s negligent maintenance of their basement stairs. We reverse and remand this case for trial under the standard established by this court’s opinion in Smith v. Ar-baugh’s Restaurant, Inc.¹

I.

The relevant facts are not in dispute. On November 26, 1967, the appellant Cooper was invited for a social visit at the home of his friends the Goodwins. At the conclusion of his call, the Good-wins indicated to Cooper that he should leave through the basement area of the house. As Cooper started to descend the final three stairs down into the basement, he slipped. He reached for a handrail, but there was none. He fell and injured his back. Cooper subsequently underwent disc surgery and contends that he has suffered a serious, incapacitating injury as a result of the Goodwins’ negligence.

Cooper filed suit in the District Court, claiming damages for his medical expenses, loss of earnings, and pain and suffering.² He alleged that the Good-wins had been negligent in several respects: their failure to have a handrail on the stairs; failure to have stair treads; maintaining a highly slippery coat of wax on the stairs; and their failure to warn of such conditions. The Goodwins denied these allegations, and raised as a defense that Cooper had been contributorily negligent in failing to “exercise reasonable care for his own safety while descending the stairs in the light of the obvious conditions.” ³

On the first day of trial, January 7, 1971, Cooper testified that as he placed his foot on the fatal step, it felt “very slippery just like you step on a sheet of ice;” that he “tried to grab ahold of something, but there wasn’t anything to grab hold of.” 4 He also stated that Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin had not warned him that the stairs were waxed, or that the handrail, which was on the stairs when he had visited the year before, was missing.

Cooper’s counsel also introduced into evidence a portion of section 2508 of the Housing Code of the District of Columbia:

Interior stairs more than two risers high shall have an enclosing wall, balustrade, or other guard on each side and shall have a hand rail on at least one side.

The trial court correctly ruled that this regulation was “admissible, but solely for the purpose of permitting the jury to consider it in determining whether or not there was exercise of due care on the part of the defendant” and not as negligence per se.4 ⁵ The judge stated that at the close of the trial, he would charge the jury in detail as to the consideration it should give this housing regulation.

On the following day, at the close of Cooper’s case, the Goodwins moved for a directed verdict on the ground that since Cooper was a social guest toward whom the homeowners owed only the duty of refraining from active negligence, no actionable negligence had been shown. The trial court agreed, stating “in my opinion there is no evidence of negligence in the case which would warrant it to go to the jury” and granted the motion.⁶

Prom this ruling, Cooper now appeals.

II.

This ease illustrates the problems which, as we pointed out in our recent ruling in Smith v. Arbaugh’s,⁷ result from rigid applications of the common law classifications of trespasser, licensee and invitee to determine the duty of care owed by a landowner/occupier to persons entering upon his property. Harshness inheres because the trial judge removed from the province of the jury the determination of crucial factual issues and resolved them himself.⁸ Confusion over the exact duty owed to Mr. Cooper, a social guest responding to an explicit invitation to use the basement stairs, is apparent in the cases cited by counsel for their respective contentions.⁹ The trial court undoubtedly relied on the legal rule that a social guest may recover for active negligence only.¹⁰ This ruling, while it may have once comported with existing case law, we now hold to be in error.¹¹

The standard adopted in Smith — that “a landowner must act as a reasonable man in maintaining his property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all the circumstances,” ¹² seeks to eliminate the harshness of and confusion over the common law classifications. Furthermore, as discussed in Smith, we believe that this standard places the crucial determination — whether Cooper suffered from an unfortunate accident, from his own carelessness, or from the Goodwins’ negligence — where it should be, with the jury and not the court. It is for the jury to consider and weigh all the circumstances of Cooper’s fall, including those which affect the foreseeability of the injury,¹³ the burden of avoiding the injury, and the care which appellant as a reasonable man could be expected to take for his own safety.

There may be some concern that less-affluent home owners and apartment dwellers will be severely penalized for the hazards of their dwelling places which they cannot afford to repair or remove. However, the financial capacity of the occupant to undertake safety precautions should be taken into account in determining what was, for him, reasonable maintenance conduct. Financial hardship should be no excuse for failing to take those measures which are within a defendant’s capacity — for example, an adequate warning. Despite the fears expressed in the concurrence, both this and the Smith opinion hold that the duty to maintain one’s property might be fully discharged by a warning of a dangerous condition. We are therefore not persuaded that owners of residential property should be excluded from the standard of reasonable care under all the circumstances.

Under this standard, the jury will have wide latitude to exercise its own rough common sense as to the degree of care which was reasonable for particular home owners or dwellers to take toward their guests. As we said in Smith this standard cannot be set in the abstract but will vary according to the circumstances of each and every case. Rather than rely on rigid labels and rules of law to provide the illusion of certainty and fairness, we choose the jury as the mature institution to take account of the infinite variety of fact situations which affect the reasonableness of human conduct.¹⁴

Accordingly, appellant Cooper is entitled to a new trial at which the jury is instructed that the Goodwins owed him the duty of maintaining their property in a condition reasonably safe under all the circumstances. Whether or not the Goodwins breached this duty is a question for the jury.

Reversed and remanded.

1 . 152 U.S.App.D.C. 86, 469 F.2d 97 (1972).

2 . The judgment sought in his complaint was $100,000 plus interest and costs.

3 . Pretrial Proceedings, November 16, 1970, p. 3.

4 . Appellant’s Appendix at pp. 3-4.

5 . Appellant’s Appendix at p. 17. In order to facilitate our own ruling on this issue, this court requested appellees to file a supplemental memorandum on the question of whether this regulation, promulgated in 1966, is applicable to owner-occupied single-family homes constructed prior to its enactment; and whether it is strictly enforced. Both parties filed memoranda. On the basis of these submissions, we have determined that, while the regulation technically applied to ap-pellees’ home, in view of the Corporation Counsel’s enforcement practices, the regulation is admissible only as evidence of negligence.

6 . Appellant’s Appendix at p. 18. The judge stated to the jury: “[T]he plaintiff has not established a case of liability on the part of the defendants. True, he was injured, but there has to be more than that. There must be a showing of actionable negligence by the defendants, and I have ruled as a matter of law that there is no showing of negligence on the part of the defendants.” Id. at 19.

7 . Supra note 1.

8 . See Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, Inc., supra note 1, 152 U.S.App.D.C. at 92, 469 F.2d at 103. In this case, the judge took from the jury the question of the degree of danger created by the waxed steps and the missing handrail; and the question whether these dangers were not discernible and should therefore have been the subject of a warning.

9 . Both parties rely primarily on Firfer v. United States, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 216, 208 F.2d 524 (1953). The definition of the duty owed to a licensee by invitation is not only confusing, but conflicted. He “may expect the owner and his agents to exercise reasonable and ordinary care and to provide reasonably safe premises . . . and he may hold the owner liable for injuries resulting from active negligence.” (citations omitted) Id. at 219, 208 F.2d at 527. Understandably, Cooper relies on the first phrase, the Goodwins on the latter.

10 . Since the trial judge himself admitted the D.C. housing regulation as evidence of a standard of reasonable conduct from which the Goodwins deviated, liis ruling of no negligence must have been premised on a different standard of care. There is, of course, some controversy as to what constitutes active negligence. Gleason v. Academy of the Holy Cross, 83 U.S.App.D.C. 253, 168 F.2d 561 (1948) establishes that property owners do owe to their social guests the duty of warning them of known but latent dangers. The trial judge’s refusal to allow this issue to go to the jury may thus have violated existing case law.

11 . Although appellant did not have the benefit of the Smith opinion when preparing his appeal, he asserts that by a series of decisions in the District of Columbia, the discrete categorization of a social guest has been abandoned. In Smith, this process was brought to fruition.

12 . Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, Inc., supra note 1, 152 U.S.App.D.C. at 89, 469 F.2d at 100.

13 . Such as, in this case, the condition of the stairs, the absence of the handrail, the visibility of these factors, the hosts’ knowledge of any danger, and the guest’s familiarity with the premises and expectations toward his hosts. It would appear, although we need not decide, that the question of what degree of care should be exercised toward those traditionally labelled “trespassers” will, under the logic of this standard, depend to a large extent on the foreseeability of their presence and hence the foreseeability of the injury.

14 . See Smith v. Arbaugh’s Restaurant, Inc., supra note 1, 152 U.S.App.D.C. at 89-92, 94, 469 F.2d at 100-103, 105.