Hogan v. Richards

FORD, J.

The plaintiff sued to recover damages for her injuries sustained when she was hit by a falling ladder in a ballroom of the Pasadena Athletic Club. The room had been rented by the defendant, the operator of the club, to members of a high school class for their graduation party. At the time of the accident students were placing decorations on a wall of the room. The plaintiff was present as the Parent Teachers Association chairman for the party. At the trial the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff’s motion for a new trial was granted on the ground that there was error at the trial in that the jury was improperly instructed as to the applicable law. The defendant has appealed from that order.

The determination of the question as to whether the trial court erred in granting a new trial must be made in the light of the evidence which related to the issue of liability. The plaintiff, Mrs. Hogan, testified that at the time she was injured there were five students, including Paul Cohen, engaged in the decoration of the room. Paul Cohen, who was on the ladder when it fell, described what was done as follows:

“. . .

we hung a fish net across the entire wall, and had balloons inside of the net, which were to drop at a certain hour of the night, and decorations all along the wall, crepe paper, ...” The decorations were attached by means of scotch tape and the use of hooks which were on the wall.

Paul Cohen testified that Mr. Bremer, the employee of the defendant with whom the arrangement for the use of the ballroom had been made, told him where he could find a ladder. He went to the place designated and obtained “a wooden A-shaped ladder.’’ He described it as follows: ”, . . it extends about usually

[sic] 8

feet or 7 feet, and it is of wood

[497]

construction, and it is like two H-ladders stuck together, and when it is standing up, it looks like an ‘A’ or an upside down ‘V.’ . . . it just had two thongs, I guess, you would call them that hooked two-thirds of the way across from one rung to the other rung. ’ ’ He said that it was not the kind of ladder that" would be found in a home. He further testified that it had no antislip devices, such as “rubber bottoms.” He placed the ladder “ [p]arallel to the wall.” His description of what happened when he was on the ladder, “ [o]ne rung from the top,” was as follows: “I had the fish net, and I was going to hang it up to the hook, and I saw I couldn’t reach it, and I just made a motion to come down, and the next thing I knew I was laying on the floor.”