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HAAG v. HARRIS et al.a1
This is an appeal from a judgment for defendants entered pursuant to the verdict of a jury. Plaintiff and appellant sued the owners of an apartment house to recover damages suffered in a fall into the elevator shaft in the apartment building. Appellant testified that he entered the apartment house, walked to the elevator door on the ground floor, opened the door, and fell into the shaft. The elevator was of the automatic, self-operating type, and the door was equipped with a locking device designed to make it impossible to move the elevator from the floor unless the door was closed, and impossible to open the door unless the elevator was at the floor from which the door led. There was no evidence that the self-locking device was defective in any respect.
Numerous witnesses testified that from a time very shortly after appellant's fall into the shaft efforts were made to open the door while the elevator was on another floor, and that the door could not be opened; several of these attempts being made while appellant was still at the bottom of the shaft in an effort to reach him. An inspector of the elevator company which serviced the elevator testified that he had tested the self-locking device two days before the accident and found it in good order. The same inspector and others connected with the elevator company tested the device the same night that the accident occurred with the same result. The following day an inspector and the safety engineer of the Industrial Accident Commission subjected the lock to an inspection, and both testified that they found it working properly and could discover no defect in it. The lock was of a type approved by the Industrial Accident Commission.
From the above recital, which fairly summarizes the evidence, it is clear that no evidence was introduced which would support a finding of defendants' negligence unless the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applies. Appellant submitted instructions based on the res ipsa loquitur doctrine which the trial court refused to give, and this refusal is assigned as error.
In our judgment, the court's refusal to give such instructions was compelled by the holding of the Supreme Court in Barbieri v. Law, 209 Cal. 429, 287 P. 464, 465. In that case plaintiff was injured by being crushed between a sidewalk elevator and the iron doors which opened onto the sidewalk. The elevator was required by the Industrial Accident Commission to be equipped with an automatic braking device which would render it impossible to raise the elevator while the sidewalk doors were locked. There was evidence in that case that this braking device was either not on the elevator or not in good working order. The court said “that this is not a case where the facts warrant application of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, for the instrumentality which caused the injury was at the time within respondent's power to operate. See 19 Cal. Jur. p. 708, § 125 et seq., and many cases cited in note.”
After so holding in the Barbieri Case, the Supreme Court further held that the affirmative evidence that the braking device was either removed or not in working order was sufficient to support a finding of negligence.
In the case before us, we have no such affirmative evidence of negligence. On the contrary, all the evidence is to the effect that the locking device on the elevator door was mechanically perfect and in good working order. The case is the same as the Barbieri Case would have been if, instead of showing the braking device absent or defective, the proof had shown such device present and in good working order. In the one case as in the other, the plaintiff himself was at the time manipulating the instrumentality which effected his injury. If the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is inapplicable in the one case, it must be inapplicable in the other.
However, even if it should be held that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is applicable in this case, the proof of the accident simply made a prima facie case which was completely met and rebutted by the other evidence. Both immediately before and immediately after the accident inspection failed to show any defect in the lock, and immediately after the accident it proved impossible to open the door with the elevator absent from the floor. The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur does no more than to raise an inference of negligence which may be completely overcome as a matter of law by evidence, uncontradicted and unimpeached, showing that defendant has used the degree of care required of him under the circumstances. Stott v. Southern Sierras Power Co., 47 Cal. App. 242, 190 P. 478; Memphis St. R. Co. v. Stockton, 143 Tenn. 201, 226 S. W. 187, 22 A. L. R. 1467, and cases cited in the note commencing at page 1471; 45 C. J. 1424, and cases cited in notes 69 and 70; L. R. A. 1917E, 50, and cases cited in note 1.
We conclude that on the entire evidence defendants were entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. This conclusion renders the discussion of other points unnecessary.
The judgment is affirmed.
DOOLING, Justice pro tem.
We concur: NOURSE, P. J.; STURTEVANT, J.
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Docket No: Civ. 9240.
Decided: December 10, 1934
Court: District Court of Appeal, First District, Division 2, California.
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