Archer v. City of Austell
| Decision Date | 04 December 1942 |
| Docket Number | 29559. |
| Citation | 23 S.E.2d 512,68 Ga.App. 493 |
| Parties | ARCHER v. CITY OF AUSTELL. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Mrs Beatrice Archer brought suit against the City of Austell, to recover damages for the death of her husband. The plaintiff alleged that on December 7, 1940, about 11 p. m., her husband, Robert Lee Archer, was arrested by the marshal of the municipality and charged with driving a car while drunk that such marshal placed the plaintiff's husband in the defendant's jail room, that such jail consists of one room attached to the rear of the defendant's city hall and is constructed of concrete, with walls approximately two feet thick, that this jail room is about 13 by 15 feet in size, with a slanting ceiling about 8 or 9 feet high, that the door to the jail room is a steel barred door, and the defendant has placed on the outside of this door a solid wooden door which, when
closed, entirely cuts off the passage of air through the steel door; that there are two small windows high up in the east wall of the jail room, that sometime after constructing the jail the defendant placed a heavy metal grating over these two windows which almost closed up the openings and admitted practically no air into the jail room; that with the solid wooden door of the jail closed there is no way to get any ventilation at all into the jail except through a few small cracks in the almost completely closed windows; that the effect of the wooden door being closed is to make of the jail room almost a "hermetically sealed chamber" that the marshal placed the plaintiff's husband in this jail room and made a fire in the little coal heater located in the jail room, and locked the steel door and closed the solid wooden door in front and then left the building, that when the marshal left the jail the plaintiff's husband was left alone in the building and had no means of getting out, that shortly after the marshal left the mattress upon the cot in the jail on which the plaintiff's husband was lying asleep in some way became ignited from the fire in the stove and began smouldering slowly; that this filled the jail room with smoke and awoke the plaintiff's husband who went to the windows and get air and to cry for help, that the jail is a considerable distance away from any of the homes in the vicinity, and although several persons heard the plaintiff's husband calling for some one to come to the jail none of them believed it was serious and nobody went to him; that because of the closed door and because the windows were almost completely closed the smoke from the burning mattress on the inside of the room could not escape, and not enough air could get through the windows to keep the plaintiff's husband alive; that because of the smoke and because he was unable to get sufficient air to keep him alive the plaintiff's husband soon died from suffocation caused by the smouldering mattress; that because of the inadequate ventilation which was provided by the defendant for such jail room, and because the jail room was maintained by the defendant in such a way that the smoke from the smouldering mattress could not escape, and that therefore the plaintiff's husband could not get sufficient air to keep him alive, the plaintiff's husband suffocated.
It was further alleged that on occasions previous to the time the plaintiff's husband was locked in jail, other prisoners who were locked therein had come near dying from suffocation caused by the smoke coming in some way from the fire in the heater provided by the defendant; that the defendant's attention had been called to the fact that the "virtually complete closing up of the windows" of the jail by the grating which the defendant had placed on them created an inadequate ventilation in the jail room, and thereby constituted a serious danger to the lives of prisoners in the event of the escape of what would ordinarily not be a dangerous amount of smoke into the jail room; that the defendant's attention had been called to the fact that because of this lack of ventilation in the jail room a fire burning in the stove which was provided by the defendant could, through some ordinarily minor mishap causing an amount of smoke to be emitted into the room, kill by suffocation any person locked therein; that the defendant therefore knew that its jail, because of the lack of ventilation provided therein, was, when a fire was burning therein and the door closed, a place in which it was dangerous to lock human beings, there being no jailer or other person in attendance so as to let out any persons who might be therein in the event smoke should escape into the jail room, that the defendant had previously had the dangerous condition of the building called to its attention, and that the jail room in which the plaintiff's husband was incarcerated constituted, at the time and under the facts above set forth, a nuisance which was dangerous to the safety of persons locked up in such jail.
The plaintiff alleged that as the result of the maintenance of such nuisance her husband was killed, and she was damaged in the sum of $30,000, her husband being an able-bodied man thirty-four years of age, with a life expectancy of 31.86 years at the time of his death. The plaintiff also alleged that more than thirty days before the filing of suit she had filed her claim with the city giving to it notice of her intention to bring this suit, as provided in Code, § 69-308.
The defendant demurred generally to the petition. The judge sustained this demurrer and dismissed the action and the plaintiff excepted.
David Gershon, of Atlanta, for plaintiff in error.
Sam. J Welsh, of Marietta, for defendant in error.
STEPHENS, Presiding Justice (after stating the foregoing facts).
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