closed), Mrs. Evers, in passing through the small door, tripped on a sill, which extended across the bottom of it, and received the injuries complained of. The facts are dealt with in more detail in the reasoris for judgment in
E s. this Court now reported and in the reasons for judgment in the Court of Appeal for Ontario (1).
At trial, on motion for non-suit, Plaxton J. dismissed the action, holding that Mrs. Evers by the exercise of reasonable care could have seen the sill and avoided her injuries. His judgment was set aside by the Court of
Appeal for Ontario (1), which gave judgment for Mrs.
Evers for $3,000 and for her husband for $1,002, holding that the sill constituted a concealed danger. The defendant appealed to this Court (special leave to appeal being granted to defendant by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in respect to the judgment recovered by the husband).
DAvis J.-The appellant operates a large public garage in downtown Toronto near the corner of Front and Bay streets. At the entrance to the garage, some fifteen feet from the sidewalk, a large folding door composed of four sections is opened to admit an automobile and closed afterwards by an attendant in the garage. In one of the sections of the large door there is a small door which may be used to leave the garage after your car has been handed over to the attendant for parking. This small exit door has a baseboard, called a "sill", 101 inches high, to provide stability for the section, since the large door, with its four sections, is suspended from the top and does not touch the floor by an inch or so.
The female plaintiff had driven into the garage with a friend of hers-the large door had been opened and then closed and the car handed over to the attendant. In the course of leaving the garage her friend had opened the small door (it was daylight outside, 1.30 p.m.), and stood aside for her to go first. Unfortunately she did not see the sill and fell over it through the open doorway and was seriously injured. Her sight was impaired; she was wearing spectacles equipped with bi-focal lenses-the lower lens for reading and the upper for seeing at a distance. Her disability was such that to look down at her feet she would have to lower her head so as to see through the upper lens. She said in evidence that she was "looking straight forward" at the time and to look at the baseboard through the lower lens, standing six feet away, "would not be clear to me".
The section of the large door which contained the small door was, by consent of counsel, set up in the courtroom at the trial and used by the witnesses to illustrate their