24 A.2d 69 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1941
Argued November 13, 1941. This action in trespass is by a husband and wife to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the wife in a fall on an icy sidewalk. The verdicts were for plaintiffs against the city and in favor of the city against the tenant of the property. The city has appealed from the refusal of its motion for judgment n.o.v.
Since the city concedes the question of contributory negligence was for the jury, we state only the facts essential for the determination of the question of negligence. The verdicts compel us to state them in the light most favorable to plaintiffs. The property adjacent to which the accident happened is located at the *325 southeast corner of 11th and Catharine Streets. Wife-plaintiff was walking east on the south sidewalk of Catharine. At a point fifty or sixty feet east of the corner, the heel of her right shoe caught between two ridges of ice, causing her to fall. The exact height of the ridges was not shown, but she said her "whole heel" went in. The sidewalks in the vicinity had been properly cleared of snow and ice but at the point where the accident happened there was an accumulation of ice extending the width of the sidewalk from house line to curb and along the sidewalk a distance of about fifty feet. For three or four years prior to the accident, a rainspout on the building had been broken. Plaintiffs' principal witness testified that when it snowed or rained, "Well, you could stand on the corner there at Warnock Street and see the water just dripping down on the shed, on the roof of that shed there, which we will call a garage, and just drop on the pavement and form the ridges of ice." He said, "It was always full of ice, regardless of the snow," "It generally stays there all winter," "Well, I wouldn't say the duration, unless the sun melts it sometime, but the majority of the winter there is." For perhaps six weeks prior to the accident, the condition was so dangerous he would walk in the street to avoid it. The condition was aggravated by the fact that the south sidewalk in winter got very little sun. The exact thickness of the ice was not shown. Virtually the only dispute was whether ashes had been thrown on the ice. The tenant testified that, on the afternoon before the accident, his employee had removed a light snowfall from the remainder of the sidewalk and had placed ashes on the ice patch. This was denied by plaintiffs, who testified the ashes were not placed there until the morning following the accident.
Judge KELLER, in Duvall v. City of New Castle,
The cases clearly indicate that a municipality's duty is not limited to the duty of removing hills and ridges from ice which naturally accumulates. It also owes a duty to protect the public against the artificial, as distinguished from the natural, accumulations of ice on its sidewalks. Whether it performed its duty was, in this case, properly left to the jury.
There is another class of cases in which a municipality is held liable without proof of hills and ridges. We refer to cases in which the formation of the ice is due to a prior act of negligence on the part of the municipality. Decker v. ScrantonCity,
The contention that there was insufficient evidence to show that the wife-plaintiff's injury was caused by the icy condition is entirely without merit.
The judgments are affirmed.