42 Minn. 530 | Minn. | 1890
The trial court was clearly right in dismissing the case on the ground that plaintiff had failed to establish a cause of action. The sum of all the evidence is that it was and for some time had been cold winter weather, and all the sidewalksin the city were covered with ice to a certain extent, so that “if a man didn’t take care, he was liable to slip and fall almost anyplace.” About a week previous to the accident there had been a fire in the building abutting on the sidewalk where plaintiff sustained the injury, during which some water escaped from the hose, and ran upon the sidewalk, which was then covered with a coating of snow, which soon after froze, and remained in that condition, without any thaw, until the time of the accident. The result was that the ice was a little thicker on this part of the sidewalk than elsewhere, and also a little rougher because of the footprints of people who stepped in the wet snow at the time of the fire.
Upon such a state of facts, there can be no recovery against the city, unless it.is the duty of such municipalities to keep their sidewalks clear of ice. In this climate such a thing would be a physical impossibility, and an attempt to do it would involve an amount of expense that would bankrupt any city. No court has ever held that reasonable care required an attempt to do any such thing. An unbroken line of authorities holds that mere slipperiness of a sidewalk
Order affirmed.