Ball v. T.J. Pardy Const. Co.

• Decision Date: 18 December 1928
• Citation: 108 Conn. 549,143 A. 855
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: BALL v. T. J. PARDY CONST. CO. ET AL.

143 A. 855

108 Conn. 549

BALL v. T. J. PARDY CONST. CO. ET AL.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

December 18, 1928

Appeal from Superior Court, Fairfield County; John Rufus Booth Judge.

Action by Walter Ball against the T. J. Pardy Construction Company and others to recover damages for personal injuries, alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the defendant brought to the superior court in Fairfield county and tried to the jury before John Rufus Booth, Judge. Verdict and judgment for the plaintiff for $1,000, from which he appealed. Error, and new trial ordered.

Clifford B. Wilson, of Bridgeport, for appellant.

William A. Bree and H. Frederick Day, both of New Haven, for appellees.

Argued before WHEELER, C.J., and MALTBIE, HAINES, BANKS, and YEOMANS, JJ.

MALTBIE, J.

In this action the plaintiff is seeking to recover damages occasioned by a fall into an elevator well in the basement of a store then under construction. The defendant the T. J. Pardy Construction Company, the appellee, was the general contractor. The jury first brought in a verdict that the plaintiff recover $4,000, but the trial court refused to accept it and returned them for further consideration. They then brought in a verdict for $1,000, which the trial court accepted.

The plaintiff was a contracting lather and plasterer and had a contract for plastering in the building. In his complaint he alleged that by reason of the injury he suffered he " was incapacitated for a number of months from carrying on his business, resulting in heavy financial loss." Being required by order of court to make this allegation more specific, he alleged certain contracts on which he was engaged at the time of the injury, and that by reason of it he was prevented from giving his personal attention to them which resulted in the loss of certain sums specified. In pursuance of the claim of damages so alleged, the plaintiff offered evidence which he claimed would show that the cost of completing the contracts specified was greater than it would have been had he been able to give his personal supervision to the work, and that it exceeded the prices for which he had contracted to perform them. The trial court excluded all this evidence upon the ground that an effort to determine such losses to the plaintiff could lead only into a field of speculation and uncertainty.

That one who, like the plaintiff, is engaged in the performance of certain contracts, may recover in a proper case any losses resulting from additional costs brought about by a personal injury, would not seem to admit of doubt. The profit of such a contractor is just as much his means of livelihood as are the wages of a laborer or the fees of a professional man. If by reason of his injury such profits have been lessened or destroyed, the fundamental principle of damages, fair compensation, requires that he be permitted to recover this loss. Thus in Comstock v. Connecticut R. & Lighting Co., 77 Conn. 65, 68, 58 A. 465, we held that a plaintiff who was prevented by a personal injury from continuing to keep a fashionable boarding house could recover the net profits which she would have made.

He who seeks to recover damages of this nature must establish a reasonable probability that his injury did bring about a loss of earnings, and must afford a basis for a reasonable estimate by the trier, court or jury, of the amount of that loss. From the very nature of the situation the amount of loss cannot be proved with exactitude, and all that can be required is that the evidence, with such...