Garbutt v. Schechter

SHINN, P. J.

In a jury trial Eunice Garbutt was awarded verdict and judgment in the amount of $25,000 for personal injuries sustained in a fall from a chair in a place of business of defendants Sehechter. Defendants made a motion for new trial which was denied and they have appealed from the judgment, contending there was no evidence that the chair from which plaintiff fell was unsafe for patrons to sit upon and that they were not guilty of negligence.

Plaintiff and her husband entered defendants’ place of business for the purpose of purchasing some lace. They were shown into a small showroom by a receptionist where plaintiff stood at the end of a table looking at a lace sample book. Mr. Garbutt seated himself on a chair. Harry Sehechter came in to wait upon them, plaintiff selected some lace and as Harry Sehechter was leaving to have the lace packaged he asked plaintiff to be seated and plaintiff sat on an “S” shaped chrome chair that had no arm rest.

Plaintiff was 5 feet, 4 inches in height and 200 pounds in weight. She had had surgery in her lower spine. As she seated herself the chair tipped forward and went out from under her, causing her to fall to the floor. Due to her condition it was necessary for her to get onto her knees to arise from that position. As she fell, her left foot went out from under her but she was able to arise and stood waiting Mr. Schechter’s

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return. As a result of the fall she was required to undergo surgery; she had not worked since the accident and the business she had conducted was sold at inventory prices. After her first surgery she would seat herself as follows:

“I

would sit down very carefully, then move myself back, because I had no bottom spine, so I would sit down on the chair . . . like this and then move myself back into the chair.” She had seen the same type of chair many times and had seen them in use, but did not recall whether she had previously sat on one of them.

The chair was introduced in evidence as an exhibit and is before us as a part of the record. The frame of the chair is composed of 1-inch aluminum tubing and the seat is supported only by legs in front which are directly in line with the front of the seat and are curved backward near the bottom. The framework which serves the purpose of legs commences to curve backward at a point 4 inches above the floor and it reaches the floor 4 inches to the rear of the front edge of the seat. Beyond that the base of the frame is flat and sufficiently well designed to prevent the chair from tipping backward, but due to the curve of the legs it has a tendency to roll forward. The seat of the chair measures 14 inches from front to back and its center of gravity was determined by experiment to be 5 inches forward of the back of the seat and the point of support furnished by the front legs to be about 334 inches from the front edge of the seat. Also it had been determined by experiment that the chair would overturn forward upon the application of different weights at different points on the seat forward of the point of support, whereas weight placed behind the point of support would not cause it to overturn. It was an obvious fact that when the chair overturned more of plaintiff’s weight rested forward of the point of support than behind it. Equally obvious is the fact that the plaintiff’s weight would be shifted to the front or the rear of the point of support as she might have leaned forward or backward.