Ansara v. Skaff

• Decision Date: 07 April 1927
• Citation: 259 Mass. 197,156 N.E. 29
• Parties: ANSARA v. SKAFF.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

259 Mass. 197

156 N.E. 29

ANSARA

v.SKAFF.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

April 7, 1927.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Frederic B. Greenhalge, Judge.

Action of tort by Michael A. Ansara, administrator of the estate of Michael Skaff, against George Skaff, to recover for death of plaintiff's intestate, caused by defective condition of stairway of tenement. Verdict was directed for defendant, and plaintiff excepts. Exceptions overruled.

A. S. Howard and M. G. Rogers, both of Lowell, for plaintiff.

J. C. Reilly, of Lowell, for defendant.

SANDERSON, J.

This is an action by an administrator to recover damages for the death of his intestate, Michael Skaff, caused by the defective condition of a railing on an outside stairway of a tenement block, fronting on Fletcher street in Lowell, and owned by the defendant. The stairway afforded access to the tenements in the block, as a common passageway for its tenants, and was in control of the defendant. The railing was made of wood running from the top to the bottom of the stairs, and was nailed to posts set in the stairs. The decedent occupied a tenement in the block fronting on Adams street and separated from the Fletcher street block by a yard or alley, and he had the right to use a part of the cellar of the Fletcher street building. On the morning of the accident, the intestate, at the request of the defendant, was cleaning out his part of this cellar. About noon, after finishing his work, finding the door into his tenement locked, he asked the defendant if he knew where his (the decedent's) wife had left the key, and the defendant suggested that she might have left it upstairs with Mrs. Elias, a tenant on the second floor of the Fletcher street building. He then went up the stairway to the Elias apartment, got the key from her, and when returning over the same stairway received the fatal injuries.

There was evidence that Mrs. Elias was a friend of the intestate and his wife; that on the day in question his wife, after locking the door of her tenement, went to that of Mrs. Elias and left the key with her, with the request that she give it to the intestate when he called for it; and that she had left the key there for him many times before. The defendant testified that when the decedent fell the rail that fell with him was in a decayed state on both ends where it had been nailed; that he took care of the stairway and went over it once or twice a week; that when he rented the tenement to Mrs. Elias, seven or eight months before, he did not see any rotten condition of the...