Hamill v. Union Trust Co.

Horney, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In this suit by Mildred V. Hamill (plaintiff-appellant) against the Union Trust Company of Maryland (defendant-appellee) to recover damages for the injuries she received as the result of being struck by a revolving door as she was leaving the bank of the defendant, the questions presented by the plaintiff on appeal concern (i) the propriety of directing a verdict for the defendant and (ii) the correctness of restricting the testimony of expert witnesses. Prior to the accident, the plaintiff had visited the bank— located on the northeast corner of St. Paul and Baltimore Streets with entrances on both streets—at least once or twice a week and sometimes oftener during a period of eighteen or nineteen years. It was her practice to go to the bank around two o’clock in the afternoon.

Ordinarily, she entered the bank and left it by the St. Paul Street entrance. As a frequent visitor to the bank, she had been in and out of the entrance where the accident occurred on many occasions without ever having experienced any difficulty with the revolving door or the steps at the entrance. Although she was arthritic, she never used a cane or crutch prior to the accident. She could enter a bus without assistance and walked from the bus stop to work and vice versa and to lunch or wherever she was required to go on errands for her employer.

And she was able to perform her secretarial duties without difficulty. On the day of the accident, as the plaintiff was slowly walking through the revolving door to leave the bank, a young man, unknown to her and never thereafter identified, rushed into the bank and rotated the door so rapidly that one of the wings struck her in the back and caused her to fall out of the door and down the steps at the entrance onto the sidewalk. She sus ²²¹ tained a fractured hip. The plaintiff could not recall where she was in the revolving door when she was struck or whether she took a step before she fell.

Nor could she say whether or not she would have fallen if the steps outside the door had not been located where they were. The revolving door had been maintained in good working order before the accident and the building engineer had never received any complaints as to its maintenance or operation. After the accident, the door was examined by a number of persons and found to be in good condition. The entrance in question, which was and still is of a type in common use in Baltimore City, was constructed prior to 1930.

The steps to the entrance, with the exception of the bottom one which is graduated in height, are seven inches high. At the top, the width of the threshold or platform opposite the center of the revolving door is seventeen, and one-half inches. No evidence was offered of there ever having been another accident at the entrance. The vice-president, to whom complaints would normally be made, had never received a complaint concerning the door or entrance during the eighteen years he had held that position.

Nor had the building engineer, who was so employed for over twenty-seven years, ever received a complaint about the steps at the door. During the course of the trial the lower court permitted two architects, called as expert witnesses by the plaintiff, to testify that platforms outside of buildings having revolving doors should be of sufficient width where steps are involved to allow a person to take a step or two on a level plane, but refused to allow them to comment as to the significance of the seventeen and one-half inch platform with respect to the location of the revolving door and the edge of the top step. At the close of all the evidence, the motion of the defendant for a directed verdict, based on the ground that the plaintiff had failed to produce legally sufficient evidence to warrant submission of the case to the jury, was granted by the trial court. 0) Regardless