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81 Kan. 295

Colwell v. Parker

Supreme Court of Kansas

Decided December 11, 1909

Supreme Court of Kansas · decided 1909-12-11

Moore, judge. STATEMENT. C. W. Parker is a manufacturer of tents, platforms, show fronts and other paraphernalia used in street fairs and carnivals. His place of business is at Abilene. He manufactured and leased to Raver & Darnaby a moving picture show for exhibition in a tent, entrance to which was by ascending steps to a platform, thence through a passage, and by descending steps about four feet to the ground inside the tent.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““If it be conceded that he was negligent in the manner in which the platform and steps were constructed, his negligence was wholly unrelated in its operation to the direct, proximate cause of the injury, but was the prior and remote cause, and did nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible.” (Colwell v. Parker, 81 Kan. 295, 299 , 105 Pac. 524 .)”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Martin v. City of Columbus

Relies on Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Columbia · D. Cleghorn v. Thompson · Rodgers v. Missouri Pacific Railway Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1909-12-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently December 1941

9 state decisions

5019091910192019301940decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Porter, J.:

¶2On the findings there was nothing left for the court but to render judgment for the appellee. The situation presented was not,’ as the appellant contends, one where the special findings are merely susceptible of an interpretation which would overthrow the general verdict, but no' other reasonable interpretation can be given to them. The finding that the appellant’s injury was the direct result of the failure of Raver & Darnaby’s employees to prevent her from entering the theater while the lights were turned off re*299quired judgment to be entered for the appellee. If it be conceded that he was negligent in the manner in which the platform and steps were constructed, his negligence was wholly unrelated in its operation to the direct, proximate cause of the injury, but was the prior and remote cause, and did nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible. (Cleghorn v. Thompson, 62 Kan. 727; Railway Co. v. Columbia, 65 Kan. 390; Rodgers v. Railway Co., 75 Kan. 222; Gas Co. v. Dabney, 79 Kan. 820.)

¶3For another equally sufficient reason it was the duty of the court to render judgment in favor of the appellee, notwithstanding the general verdict. The fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth findings are to the effect that steps of this kind had been in general use for several years; that hundreds of thousands of people had used them without being injured; and that the appellee at the time he manufactured the steps in question had never heard of any injury resulting to a person by falling from steps similarly constructed and used. The instructions charged the jury that if these facts were found from the evidence the appellee was not liable. The appellant makes no complaint of the instructions, and filed no motion for a new trial, so that the instructions must be regarded as the law of the case. (U. P. Rly. Co. v. Hutchinson, 40 Kan. 51.) Whether the law as declared is correct or not, we need not inquire; it ~was the law which the jury were bound to follow.

¶4The judgment is affirmed.

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