Sally Marcher v. Eloise O. Butler

lady for Victoria Golden, the lessee of a two-story condominium owned by the defendant, Eloise Butler. The upstairs and downstairs of the condominium are connected by a stairway that has two ninety degree turns in it -- one turn is at the top, the other at the bottom. At the ninety degree turns, the stairs fan out so that they are narrow on one side of the stairway and wide on the other. On January 15, 1984, Marcher was cleaning the condominium for the first time, and as she started downstairs to get additional cleaning supplies, she put her left hand on a smaller wall to the left side of the stairwell and then stepped down. Since she was on the narrow side of the fan-shaped stairs, there was little or no stair where she stepped, and she fell to the bottom of the stairs on her backside. The stairwell did not have handrails.