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Allendorf v. Kaiserman Enterprises8/4/1993
In this personal injury negligence action, Elizabeth L. Allendorf (plaintiff) was struck and injured by the automatic door of a self-service elevator in an office building owned and operated by defendant Kaiserman Enterprises (Kaiserman), which contracted with defendant Amtech Reliable Elevator Company/American Building Maintenance Industries, Inc. (Amtech) for the maintenance and repair of its elevators. Before trial, the trial court dismissed plaintiff's punitive damage claims against Kaiserman and Amtech. Subsequently, the court bifurcated the issues of liability and damages. In the liability trial, a jury found Amtech negligent and Kaiserman and plaintiff not negligent. In the damages trial, a second jury returned a verdict of $25,000 in plaintiff's favor.
Amtech appeals from the order memorializing the verdict in the liability trial and plaintiff appeals from the court's order dismissing her claims for punitive damages and from the jury verdict in the damages trial.
I
On its appeal, Amtech argues that the trial court erred in submitting a res ipsa loquitur instruction to the jury. To place this issue in context, it is necessary to outline briefly the relevant evidence presented at the liability trial.
The elevator in which plaintiff was injured had two door safety devices: (1) a rubber safety edge running along the side of the door, which was designed to immediately reopen the door if it contacted any object while the door was closing, and (2) an electric eye in the side of the door, which was designed to immediately reopen the door if the electric beam emitting from the eye was broken by any object in the beam's path while the door was closing.
On July 5, 1986, an Amtech service mechanic was dispatched to Kaiserman's building because a moving company left a large
rubber "anti-skid device" wedged under the bottom of the elevator door, which was not allowing it to close. The service mechanic discovered that the rubber safety edge on the elevator door had been bent by an object wedged underneath it. Therefore, he straightened out the safety edge "as best as could." At the same time, he tried to readjust the electric eye so that it would not be activated by the bend in the rubber safety edge. The service mechanic felt that both safety devices were "functional" when he left Kaiserman's building on July 5, 1986.
Around 9 a.m. on July 24, 1986, the day of the accident, Amtech received a call from Kaiserman reporting that the elevator door "keeps getting stuck." Consequently, Amtech dispatched a service mechanic to the Kaiserman building. However, the service mechanic's work sheet indicated that he had been sent to the Kaiserman building to perform "routine maintenance" rather than in response to a "trouble call." Although the service mechanic had no specific recollection of this assignment, he asserted that routine maintenance would include a check of the elevator door's safety systems and that if there had been a problem with either system he would have recorded it on his work sheet. Moreover, he would have taken the elevator out of service if he could not repair the system. The service mechanic's work sheet did not indicate a problem with any of the elevator's systems.
Plaintiff's accident occurred only a few hours later, around 2 p.m. According to plaintiff, she was entering the elevator behind her two-year-old daughter when the door "closed" upon her and "pinned" her against the door frame, half in and half out of the elevator. The door did not give at all, pushing her with increasing pressure against the wall. F
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