85 Pa. Super. 542 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1925
Argued April 28, 1925. The verdicts in favor of the respective plaintiffs settle all disputed questions of fact in their favor.
Walter Euler, a boy eleven years old, had his arm badly crushed and broken by getting it caught between the wall of a house and a heavily loaded cable reel, which had been left on the sidewalk of a public street by the city authorities, without any block or other contrivance to keep it from rolling or being rolled by children.
The reel, with the lead cable wound around it, weighed about a thousand pounds. The cable was intended for use in the city's fire alarm police signal system. None of it had been unwound at the time of the accident. It was admitted that it was customary to block such reels when left standing on the street, both to hinder their rolling away of their own force and to prevent their being rolled by children, to whom they are usually a source of interest and attraction, manifested by "crawling up on top and rolling them out in the street."
On the evening of this accident five or six children, young Euler among them, were playing around this reel, some pushing it away from the wall where it had been left, while one of them attempted to ride on its top, and then pushing it or letting it roll back. While doing so Euler put out his arm to stop the reel and it was crushed between the reel and the wall.
Under this state of facts we think the question of the city's negligence was properly for the jury. The city authorities knew of the temptation such a reel, if left unblocked, would prove to the children of the neighborhood; that they would probably try to get on it and roll it; and of the likelihood of injury resulting to them and the public generally, if left in such a condition that it could be rolled by them: Rachmel v. Clark,
The judgments are affirmed.