Opinion
No. CV05 5000125 S
March 9, 2007
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
The plaintiff, William Wilson, brought suit against the defendant, Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., alleging injuries from a defective chair in the defendant's waiting area. In a jury trial held on October 24, 2006, the plaintiff testified as follows.
On September 8, 2003, the plaintiff brought his car to the defendant's service station to have it serviced. Directed to the waiting room, the plaintiff chose a chair and sat down. After about fifteen minutes, the chair collapsed, causing the plaintiff, who weighed approximately three hundred and fifty pounds, to fall to the floor. A portion of the chair punctured the plaintiff's buttocks.
The only evidence presented by the plaintiff regarding the defendant's possible notice of the defective condition of the chair came during direct examination of the plaintiff:
[Plaintiff's counsel]: Did you get a look at the chair at all?
[The plaintiff]: Very briefly. I got up, I wasn't in all honesty looking a whole lot at the chair, I looked down real quickly. Noticed a screw or nut and I noticed the point, a sharp point and that was it because that's what I was trying to see what stabbed me. (Trial tr. at 9.)
At the close of the plaintiff's case, the defendant moved for a directed verdict. The court explicitly reserved judgment on the motion and the defendant presented its case. On October 25, 2006, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, awarding $3,271.39 economic damages and $15,000 in non-economic damages. The defendant moved to set aside the verdict, pursuant to Practice Book § 16-35, on October 31, 2006. The court heard arguments on December 11, 2006, and now rules on the defendant's prior directed verdict motion.
CT Page 9747
DISCUSSION
Practice Book § 16-37 provides in relevant part: "Whenever a motion for a directed verdict made at any time after the close of the plaintiff's case in chief is denied or for any reason is not granted, the judicial authority is deemed to have submitted the action to the jury subject to a later determination of the legal questions raised by the motion. The defendant may offer evidence in the event the motion is not granted, without having reserved the right to do so and to the same extent as if the motion had not been made. After the acceptance of a verdict and within the time stated in Section 16-35 for filing a motion to set a verdict aside, a party who has moved for a directed verdict may move to have the verdict and any judgment rendered thereon set aside and have judgment rendered in accordance with his or her motion for a directed verdict within the aforesaid time after the jury have been discharged from consideration of the case. If a verdict was returned the judicial authority may allow the judgment to stand or may set the verdict aside and either order a new trial or direct the entry of judgment as if the requested verdict had been directed.""Directed verdicts are not favored . . . A trial court should direct a verdict only when a jury could not reasonably and legally have reached any other conclusion . . . A directed verdict is justified if . . . the evidence is so weak that it would be proper for the court to set aside a verdict rendered for the other party." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Riccio v. Harbour Village Condominium Ass'n., Inc., 281 Conn. 160, 163, 914 A.2d 529 (2007).
"Although it is the jury's right to draw logical deductions and make reasonable inferences from the facts proven . . . it may not resort to mere conjecture and speculation." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. An inference made by the jury "must have some definite basis in the facts." Boehm v. Kish, 201 Conn. 385, 389, 517 A.2d 624 (1986). "When an element necessary to a cause of action cannot be established without conjecture, the evidence presented cannot withstand a motion for a directed verdict." Id.
The plaintiff here was a business invitee of the defendant. "A business invitee is a person who is invited to enter or remain on land for a purpose directly or indirectly connected with business dealings with the possessor of the land." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Sevigny v. Dibble Hollow Condominium Ass'n., Inc., 76 Conn.App. 306, 320, 819 A.2d 844 (2003). As a result of the plaintiff's invitee status, the defendant owed him a duty to keep its premises in a reasonably safe condition and to protect him from known, foreseeable dangers. CT Page 9748 Baptiste v. Better Val-U Supermarket, Inc., 262 Conn. 135, 140, 811 A.2d 687 (2002). "Typically, [for the plaintiff to recover for the breach of a duty owed to [him] as [a business] invitee, it [is] incumbent upon [him] to allege and prove that the defendant either had actual notice of the presence of the specific unsafe condition which caused [his injury] or constructive notice of it . . . [T]he notice, whether actual or constructive, must be notice of the very defect which occasioned the injury and not merely of conditions naturally productive of that defect even though subsequently in fact producing it." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id.
Our Supreme Court has defined constructive notice as follows: "A possessor of land is charged with constructive notice of a dangerous condition when it is of such a nature and duration that a reasonable inspection would have disclosed the risk . . . Constructive notice is premised on the policy determination that under certain circumstances a person should be treated as if he had actual knowledge so that one should not be permitted to deny knowledge when he is acting so as to keep himself ignorant . . . Therefore, when a possessor of land fails to make or to have made a reasonable inspection which would have disclosed the dangerous condition, his negligent ignorance is, in the eyes of the law, equivalent to actual knowledge." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Hall v. Burns, 213 Conn. 446, 479, 569 A.2d 10 (1990).
"The controlling question in deciding whether the defendants had constructive notice of the defective condition is whether the condition existed for such a length of time that the defendants should, in the exercise of reasonable care, have discovered it in time to remedy it . . . What constitutes a reasonable length of time is largely a question of fact to be determined in the light of the particular circumstances of a case." (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Riccio v. Harbour Village Condominium Ass'n., Inc., supra, 281 Conn. 163-64. Such length of time need not be substantial and can be as little as two weeks; see Kirby v. Zlotnick, 160 Conn. 341, 345, 278 A.2d 822 (1971) (defective porch railing); or even three hours; see Kurti v. Becker, 54 Conn.App. 335, 339, 733 A.2d 916 (ice on driveway), cert. denied, 251 Conn. 909, 739 A.2d 1248 (1999). The plaintiff must provide some evidence of the length of time that the condition existed, however, and a failure to do so will preclude a finding of constructive notice on the part of the defendant. McCrorey v. Heilpern, 170 Conn. 220, 222, 365 A.2d 1057 (1976); Gulycz v. Stop Shop Cos., 29 Conn.App. 519, 522, 615 A.2d 1087, cert. denied, 224 Conn. 923, 618 A.2d 527 (1992).
The court finds that the evidence presented by the plaintiff failed to establish that the defendant had constructive notice of the defective condition of the chair. The only evidence concerning the defendant's possible notice was the plaintiff's testimony that following the chair's collapse he "[n]oticed a screw or nut . . ." In his objection to the defendant's motion to set aside the verdict, the plaintiff argues that "the fact that screws loosen over time is a conclusion the jury may have reached that would be supported by the evidence before them." Even if the jury could draw such a conclusion, it could not conclude that the defendant had constructive notice of "the very defect which occasioned the injury . . ." Baptiste v. Better Val-U Supermarket, Inc., supra, 262 Conn. 140. No evidence was presented regarding the construction of the chair or where the screw or nut might have been located prior to the incident. Without any such evidence, it is impossible to know whether the parts seen by the plaintiff were even vital to the support of the chair. In short, for the jury to conclude from the plaintiff's evidence that the defendant had constructive notice of the defect in the chair, it would have to resort to impermissible "conjecture and speculation." Riccio v. Harbour Village Condominium Ass'n., Inc., supra, 281 Conn. 163.
The defendant's motion for a directed verdict is hereby granted and judgment for the defendant should enter accordingly.