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Comment, Wex S. Malone

Vanderbilt Law Review

There is no discernible reluctance by courts to direct verdicts on the issue of the plaintiff's carelessness in suits by invitees against proprietors of business premises. The writer has had occasion to examine a representative group of about two hundred cases in this area where contributory negligence was seriously in issue. In more than a third of these disputes the appellate courts had either approved the trial judge's action in directing a defendant verdict, or had reversed a judgment for plaintiff because the trial court had allowed the controversy to reach the jury on the contributory negligence issue. I have …