Opinion
January 4, 1952. Rehearing Denied February 14, 1952.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Dade County, J.N. Morris, J.
Dixon, DeJarnette Bradford, Miami, for appellant.
E. David Rosen and Morehead, Forrest, Brown Gotthardt, all of Miami, for appellees.
The appellant, owner of an apartment building, was sued by the appellee, a tenant, for damages sustained by falling on an interior stairway, alleged to have been "negligently maintained * * * by permitting the steps to become wet and slick and worn at an angle." A judgment was awarded the plaintiff, and the defendant appealed.
We go immediately to the testimony of the appellant, herself, to learn exactly what happened to give rise to the action. She had occupied the apartment for five years and during that period the lease had been renewed monthly. Two stairways were available, one in the front, more frequently used by her, and one in the rear. As the mishap occurred on the front stairway, we will devote our attention to it. The steps were "normal" in dimensions, constructed of concrete, worn from long usage, and bare. About halfway between floors was a platform where the course of the stairs changed.
Overhead was a skylight that had been broken so that when it rained, water accumulated either on the stairway or so near that it would be tracked onto the stairway. When complaints were made to the management about the condition of the steps, in rainy weather, the water would be mopped up if a servant was at hand.
On the day appellee was injured it was raining. She reached the landing without incident as she descended the stairs, "watching where [she] was going," and as she turned at the landing she slipped and "just bounced down" almost to the floor below. She said there was no railing along the wall for her to grasp to break her fall.
Even so, the steps had been used by the appellee many times each day throughout the five years she had occupied quarters in the building, and all that time they had been in the same general condition — and always in the same condition during a rain — as they were the day she fell. Each month she, or her husband, had re-rented the property for the ensuing month, so they seemed to have been satisfied with the accommodations. Often had she seen water on the landing as she saw it at the moment she was injured.
We think the appellee's own account of the accident negates any charge that her misfortune was proximately caused by the appellant's negligence. This is particularly true because the tenant had the same opportunity as the landlord to know of the defect, Butler v. Maney, 146 Fla. 33, 200 So. 226, and the common stairway at the end of each rental period — in this case, thirty days — was in the same condition as at the time of letting. Urserleo v. Rosengard, 248 Mass. 542, 143 N.E. 497, Sneckner v. Feingold, 314 Mass. 613, 51 N.E.2d 118.
Surely appellee knew that water on the concrete surface might cause her to slip if she stepped in it. It seems to us that the danger was so obvious that she accepted the responsibility, when she did not side-step the water or use the other stairway that was available.
The judgment is reversed.
SEBRING, C.J., and TERRELL and MATHEWS, JJ., concur.