Shotwell v. Winthrop Community Hospital

In brief outline: The plaintiff, Edith Shotwell, accompanied by three relatives, appeared on the evening of December 11, 1982, at an entrance doorway of the defendant Winthrop Community Hospital intending to go in and visit her sister, a patient. The doorway presented itself as consisting of two glass panels. The panel to the left carried the legend that it was an automatic sliding door. Activated by a person’s approach, it would move behind the adjacent panel, which was fixed, not moveable. The plaintiff walked up to the panel to the right and thus apparently did not stir the moveable panel.…