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GILES v. NEW HAVEN2/8/1994
The chain then fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft with a loud crash,
which frightened the plaintiff. Upon hearing the crash, the plaintiff, fearing for her safety, reversed the direction of the elevator as it was approaching the twelfth floor. She directed the elevator to the nearest floor, the eleventh, where she jumped from the cab sustaining additional injuries. At the time the plaintiff received her injuries, the defendant had a longstanding exclusive contract with the building owner to maintain and inspect the elevator and its component parts. The elevator was installed by the defendant approximately sixty-one years before the accident. William Hendry, the defendant's district maintenance supervisor, testified that the accident was caused by the compensation chain's becoming hooked on a rail bracket in the elevator shaft due to excessive sway of the chain. Hendry further testified that the elevators were routinely inspected, but that neither inspection nor testing of the compensation chain was part of that routine inspection. The bolts that held the compensation chain to the underside of the elevator cab were never changed, and no one other than the defendant company touched the compensation chain or the bolts.
"On cross-examination, Hendry testified that the normal sway of a compensation chain is approximately one to two inches, and in order for the chain to get hooked on a rail bracket it must sway at least eighteen inches. He further testified that for the chain to sway eighteen inches there must be some misoperation of the elevator, such as rapid reversals of direction. He had never before seen a compensation chain pulled free of an elevator cab in his thirty-seven years of employment by the defendant. He further stated that on one occasion he had seen the plaintiff make rapid reversals of direction of the elevator.
"The plaintiff, however, testified that her ascension from the first to the twelfth floor was routine until she approached the twelfth floor, and that the cab began
to shake and sway before she reversed its direction to the eleventh floor. She further testified that the crash of the compensation chain as it hit the bottom of the elevator shaft occurred before she reversed the direction of the cab." Giles v. New Haven, 30 Conn. App. 148, 152-53, 619 A.2d 476 (1993).
The plaintiff argued in the Appellate Court that she had offered sufficient evidence at trial from which the jury reasonably could have inferred that the defendant had been negligent in failing to inspect, maintain and repair the compensation chain. In so arguing, the plaintiff presented no direct evidence of the elevator malfunctioning, nor of any defect in the compensation chain. In support of her claim that the question of the defendant's negligence be submitted to the jury, she relied, however, on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur which, when properly invoked, allows the jury to infer negligence based on the circumstances of the incident even though no direct evidence of negligence has been introduced. Malvicini v. Stratfield Motor Hotel, Inc., 206 Conn. 439, 441-42, 538 A.2d 690 (1988). This "rule of common sense . . . is but a specific application of the general principle that negligence can be proved by circumstantial evidence." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 442. The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applies when three conditions are satisfied: "`(1) he situation, condition, or apparatus causing the injury must be such that in the ordinary course of events no injury would result unless from a careless construction, inspection or user[;] (2) oth inspection and user must have been at the time of the injury in the control of the party charged with n
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