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203 Minn. 225

280 N.W 862

Lyman v. Hermann

Supreme Court of Minnesota

Decided July 8, 1938

Supreme Court of Minnesota · decided 1938-07-08

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1938-07-08

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently April 1975

9 state decisions

3019381940195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Gallagi-ier, Chief Justice

¶1 (dissenting).

¶2 I am of the opinion that the case presented a question of fact for the jury. The evidence was such that the jury would have been justified in finding that the trap door, as constructed, constituted a nuisance, or at least in finding that it created an unreasonable *233 risk to which plaintiff and other patrons of the restaurant were exposed. A reasonably prudent person would hardly expect to find an open trap door inside the entrance to a lavatory in a public building. The fact that the owner of the building may have contemplated that the door to the entrance be closed before the trap door was opened does not absolve him from liability. The building was so constructed that the trap door could be opened and left open regardless of whether the door to the entrance was open or closed. Strangers on the premises would not contemplate such a condition of danger. I cannot subscribe to the doctrine expressed in the majority opinion.

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