290 Mass. 513 | Mass. | 1935
This is an action of tort tried to a jury to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff, a woman sixty-five years of age, by reason of falling over a step in a stairway leading from the fourth to the third floor of an apartment house, of which the plaintiff was a tenant and the defendant the owner.
The apartment house, located at 100 Lafayette Street, Salem, had been occupied by the plaintiff for several years prior to April 25, 1931, the day of the accident. It had two stores on the first floor and fifteen apartments on the three floors above. The plaintiff testified that the hallways “were never very well lighted when she went to live there and that lots of times the lights wouldn’t be on until 10 or 10:30 p.m.” She further testified as follows: She lived on the third floor. On the night of her accident, which occurred at about 7:15 p.m., a Mrs. Shay, who lived on the fourth floor, called to her from that floor that she would help the plaintiff “to get her screens down.” After leaving her hat and coat in her apartment the plaintiff went to the fourth floor by way of the main stairway. There was a front stairway and a rear stairway at the end of the hallway. The screens were stored in a back hallway on the fourth floor. The plaintiff went with Mrs. Shay down a corridor to the hallway of the back stairs. This was the first time she had been in that back hall and the first time she ever was up that way. From the back hallway to her apartment
The evidence warranted a finding that when the plaintiff entered the building lights were on on the stairs from the first to the second and the second to the third floor; and that when she went up the third flight to Mrs. Shay’s the lights were on on the front stairs and the stairs were light enough for her to see. The plaintiff had never been in the rear part of the third floor and whenever she had occasion to go up to Mrs. Shay’s she always went up the front way. She had never used the flight of stairs where she fell before
It is plain that the verdict for the defendant was directed rightly. The common hallway leading to the plaintiff’s apartment was properly lighted. The main stairway leading to the fourth floor likewise was lighted. The plaintiff’s visit to the back hallway was solely for her own ends, that is, to get screens for her apartment windows before other tenants took them. She did not go for them at the invitation of the defendant or at the invitation or suggestion of the janitor, in whose keeping the screens were placed by the defendant. In a word, the plaintiff, on the evidence, was a mere licensee when she took the screens from the place of their keeping and was in the hallway where they were kept. As such the defendant owed her no duty to keep that hallway lighted. Moreover, if we should assume an invitation to go to the hallway for the screens, there was no evidence that the absence of the bulb was due to any fault of the defendant or his agents and servants; nor that he or they had knowledge of the removal of the bulb, or, knowing of its absence, had failed to exercise reasonable care to restore it. Whether the plaintiff was an invitee or a licensee she knew and appreciated the measure and the degree of darkness and was not misled by any act or omission of the defendant. As a person of ordinary experience she knew that one who walks in the total darkness of a strange hallway is likely to encounter obstructions to her passage and pitfalls to her feet. Benton v. Watson, 231 Mass. 582, 584.
Exceptions overruled.