noting that tenants are invitees of the landlord while using common areas on the landlord's property
How later courts described this case
- noting that tenants are invitees of the landlord while using common areas on the landlord's property
- cited by the Court of Civil Appeals in the present case and reversing a summary judgment that had been entered in favor of a landlord in an action with facts similar to those in this case
- quoted with approval in Vick v. H.S.I. Mgmt., Inc., 507 So. 2d 433, 435 (Ala. 1987)
- steep stairway without a handrail
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Deciding these summary judgment cases involving negligence claims, in which the *Page 114
scintilla rule must be applied, and in which summary judgment is rarely appropriate, is like steering the ship of justice on a course between the rocky shore of Scylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis. The law says that a plaintiff should be able to state what actually caused the injury. Folmar v. Montgomery Fair Company, Inc. , 293 Ala. 686 , 309 So.2d 818 (1975), (Maddox, J., dissenting). On the other hand, a plaintiff who shows a condition which a jury could find was unsafe, and who further shows the relationship of the parties and other evidence from which a jury could find a lack of due care, and that the alleged injury was proximately caused thereby, is entitled to have a jury, which has been properly instructed on the law by the court, decide the issues in the case. Winn-Dixie v. Godwin , Ala., 349 So.2d 37 (1977).