Agnes Ecker v. Big Bend Bank

This case comes to the writer upon recent reassignment. Appellant seeks by this action to recover damages of $15,000 which allegedly resulted from a fall she sustained while on respondent's premises. This appeal follows the trial court's action sustaining respondent's motion for summary judgment and entering final judgment in favor of respondent. The only issue before this court is whether the facts established by the pleadings, the plaintiff's deposition and those stated in the affidavit filed in connection with the motion for summary judgment were sufficient, as a matter of law, to relieve the defendant of liability and entitle it to the judgment rendered. If, under that evidence, which was the only evidence before the court, and as a matter of law, the plaintiff is not entitled to recover, then the defendant is entitled to a summary judgment. Brown v. Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Mo. App., 375 S.W.2d 623, l.c. 629. The physical topography of the area where this fall occurred is of importance. The defendant maintains a parking lot to the rear of its building. This lot lies immediately to the south of a parking lot maintained in connection with an office building in which the plaintiff's physician had offices. The level of the defendant's parking lot is 6 feet above the grade of the other lot. To provide pedestrian access to its premises from the lower parking lot, the defendant constructed a stairway, the top step of which was concrete and which also formed the top of the retaining wall separating the two parking lots. It is approximately 14 inches from this step down to the surface of defendant's lot. Curved raised asphalt mounds are located on defendant's lot and serve as wheel blocks for automobiles parked thereon. These are approximately 5"" high. A line of these wheel blocks was placed about 11 1/2 inches south of the retaining wall so that a gutter was formed between them and the retaining wall.