Allas v. Borough of Rumson

• Citation: 176 A. 352
• Decision Date: 24 January 1935
• Docket Number: No. 23.,23.
• Parties: ALLAS v. BOROUGH OF RUMSON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

176 A. 352

ALLAS

v. BOROUGH OF RUMSON.

No. 23.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Jan. 24, 1935.

Syllabus by the Court.

The plaintiff-appellant, being at the municipal building of defendant borough on business and leaving it after dark, fell into an unguarded sunken ramp leading to a basement under the building. Held, that under the rule in Board, etc., of Sussex County v. Strader, 18 N. J. Law, 108, 35 Am. Dec. 530, a nonsuit was properly ordered, and that the facts that the opposite end of the building was closed off and rented out to the national government as a post office, and that at that end there was also a public telephone, of which the municipality shared the tolls, did not amount to a use for profit of the premises where the plaintiff was injured.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Monmouth County.

Action by Charles Alias against the Borough of Rumson and others. From an adverse judgment, plaintiff appeals.

Judgment affirmed.

Argued October term, 1934, before BROGAN, C. J., and PARKER and BODINE, JJ.

Theodore D. Parsons, of Red Bank, for appellant.

Harold McDermott, of Freehold, for respondent.

PARKER, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment of nonsuit at the trial as against the respondent borough of Rumson. Two individual defendants were joined, with a separate count in the complaint as to each, but the result of the action so far as they are concerned does not seem to be before us.

The case arose out of the following circumstances: The plaintiff was at the borough hall in connection with identifying prisoners at police headquarters, and was injured while leaving by falling into an unguarded sunken ramp in the dark. He sought to hold the borough respondent in damages, and the nonsuit was awarded on the theory that, if there was any negligence of the municipality in maintaining its premises in a unsafe condition, it was negligence for which the municipality under a long line of decisions is not liable.

The physical conditions would be more readily understood if a map or sketch had been submitted with the case, but none was put in evidence. However, the photographs make the situation fairly clear. The building, used for a borough hall and offices, was a long brick building facing the south, and in front of which was a public highway at a few feet distant. There were flights of steps or stoops at the middle of the front and of the back of the building and also at the east and west ends. The middle section of the building was used exclusively for the borough hall and offices. The westerly end was assigned for the use of the police department, and had its own separate entrance at the west end. The easterly end of the building was rented out by the borough to the national government as a post office. It was closed off from the rest of the building as effectively as one house in a brick row is closed from another and had its own stoop at the east end. In connection with this stoop, there seems to have been a small telephone booth which was there under contract with the telephone company and the municipality, used for a pay station, and the municipality received a small commission on the tolls. At the back or north side of the building was a yard, and leading down into it from the middle of the building was a stoop corresponding to that in front. At the west end of this stoop were steps leading downward from the yard into a sunken area some three or four feet wide, the exact dimensions are immaterial, and leading westward along the basement of the building to another flight of steps near the northwest corner which led up into a small door giving access...