Medcraft v. the Merchants Exchange

PRESTON, J.

Action for damages for personal injuries. At the conclusion of the evidence the court, on motion of defendant, granted a nonsuit and judgment followed from which plaintiff appeals upon a full record. The facts are not in dispute and those here material may be set forth within a narrow compass:

Defendant owns a large office building in the city and county of San Francisco known as The Merchants Exchange Building. Offices therein are rented .to tenants for their own use and the use of all persons having business with them. Plaintiff, an insurance manager, on December 13, 1919, had business with the Pacific Adjustment Bureau, the offices of which were located on the tenth floor of defendant’s said building. During the transaction of his business at this place, plaintiff stained his hands with ink. After concluding the business transaction, he passed down the corridor of the building seeking a washroom wherein to cleanse his hands. He was more' or less familiar with the other floors of the building and knew the location thereon of the washrooms and urinals. Moving along the corridor to a point corresponding to the position of the washrooms and urinals on other floors of the building, he found a plain door, bearing no invitational sign, but, feeling that it must be the place he sought, he opened the door and found himself in a small dimly lighted antechamber with a swinging door between it and a larger room, which was lighted. The light from the larger room, shed over and under the swinging door, served to light dimly the antechamber. Plaintiff looked at the so-called usual place but saw no wash-basin there and he did not seek it in the lighted room, where two urinals were located. He thought the washroom must be at some other place and recalled that upon opening the door and entering the room wherein he stood, has hand had come in contact with the bolt of another door to his right. This door was ajar. The light shed into the little room was just

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sufficient to make the darkness visible within the area to which this last-mentioned door led. Pursuing the thought that this door must lead to a washroom, he proceeded toward the aperture, moving in total darkness, and in attempting to set foot on a supposed floor and to find a supposed electric switch button, he plunged into an air-shaft some eighty feet in depth but fortunately, after a fall of some fifteen or twenty feet, caught himself upon a ledge of some kind and was rescued, although severely and permanently injured. He thereupon brought this suit alleging negligence on the part of defendant owner of the building growing out of the above facts.