191 A.D. 497 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1920
The plaintiff’s injury was a serious one. Three fingers of his left hand were caught between a gate and a post and so injured that he will not have the full use of those fingers for the rest of his life. If the plaintiff were entitled to any verdict, the damages are insufficient and a new trial must be granted.
The defendant, however, seeks to sustain this judgment and this order upon the ground that the plaintiff was not entitled to any verdict. The determination of this question calls for an examination of the evidence presented by the case. The defendant was the owner of an apartment house. The entrance to the back of that apartment house was through a gate in an iron fence which opened up the back area. Upon the day in question a policeman was chasing a man who ran into this back area, climbed upon the fire escape and sought to ascend to the upper part or top of the building. The policeman was following him. A crowd gathered upon the sidewalk opposite this back area and the plaintiff was standing upon the sidewalk with his hand upon the post of the gate,
We think there was sufficient evidence to carry the case to the jury upon the failure of the defendant’s servant to exercise reasonable care. Whether this janitress, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have looked to ascertain whether any boy’s fingers were upon this post when the gate was shut, is in our judgment a question for the jury to decide.
The judgment and order should, therefore, be reversed and a new trial granted, with costs to plaintiff to abide the event.
Clarke, P. J., Laughlin, Page and Merrell, JJ., concur.
Judgment and order reversed and new trial ordered, with costs to appellant to abide event.