22 A.2d 742 | Pa. | 1941
The wife plaintiff, Flora M. Henn, walking along the sidewalk in front of No. 413 Curtin Street, Pittsburgh, stepped into a hole and was thrown and injured. In this suit, brought by her and her husband against the city to recover damages, they obtained judgments from which defendant appeals on the ground that the place and cause of the accident were not adequately defined by plaintiffs' testimony, and that the defect in the pavement was not great enough to impose liability on the municipality.
Neither of these contentions can be sustained.
Mrs. Henn testified: "I had taken a few steps . . . and my foot got caught in a hole in the sidewalk and I could feel it like tugging at my galosh. I had new galoshes on that morning and it threw me forward, you see, and then I crumbled down on the sidewalk . . ." This clearly indicates that it was the catching of her foot in the hole which caused her to fall. Although the occurrence took place at 10:35 o'clock in the morning, the sidewalk was covered with recently fallen snow, which accounted for her failure to observe the defect in the pavement and avoid the accident. The testimony sufficiently fixed the location of the hole and described its dimensions and general appearance.
According to the evidence the hole was one and a half to two inches in depth at the time of the accident; its depth six months before was estimated at an inch or an inch and a half. It constituted "a broken place there, *258
sort of a triangle shape, and about seven or eight inches by ten," nearly in the center of one of the cement blocks of the sidewalk. It is true, as contended by defendant, that "An elevation, depression or irregularity in a sidewalk may be so trivial that the court, as a matter of law, is bound to hold that there was no negligence in permitting it to exist":Davis v. Potter,
The case was for the jury and the judgments are affirmed.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice DREW and Mr. Justice PATTERSON dissent.