Brown v. the City of Aurora.

• Decision Date: 20 November 1883
• Citation: 1883 WL 10379,109 Ill. 165
• Parties: EUGENE L. BROWNv.THE CITY OF AURORA.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

109 Ill. 165

1883 WL 10379 (Ill.)

EUGENE L. BROWN

v.THE CITY OF AURORA.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed at Ottawa Nov. 20, 1883.

WRIT OF ERROR to the Appellate Court for the Second District;-- heard in that court on appeal from the circuit court of Kane county; the Hon. C. W. UPTON, Judge, presiding. Mr. CHAS. WHEATON, Mr. A. J. HOPKINS, and Mr. N. J. ALDRICH, for the plaintiff in error.

Mr. DALLAS M. CLAPSADDLE, City Attorney, and Mr. R. G. MONTONY, for the defendant in error.

Mr. JUSTICE MULKEY delivered the opinion of the Court:

Eugene L. Brown, the plaintiff in error, recovered a judgment, in the Kane circuit court, against the city of Aurora, for $6000, on account of injuries received by him in a fall upon one of the sidewalks of that city, charged to have been occasioned by the negligence of the city in not keeping the same in repair. On appeal by the city to the Appellate Court for the Second District, the judgment was reversed, on the ground the evidence did not support the verdict of the jury, and for this reason the Appellate Court declined to remand the cause to the circuit court for another trial. Brown thereupon sued out the present writ of error, and the case is now before us for review.

The facts, as specifically found by the Appellate Court, and recited in the final order in the cause, are as follows: “That the sidewalk upon which the injury was received was, at the time the said injury was received, reasonably safe, as a sidewalk, for the appellee (plaintiff in error) to pass over it, if he exercised ordinary care; that before and at the time appellee passed over said sidewalk on the occasion of receiving said injury, he was fully aware of the condition as to its slipperiness and all other defects in and of said walk, and at the said time of so passing over the said sidewalk, he, the appellee, did not exercise that ordinary care that a reasonably prudent man would have done under the same circumstances; and we further find that the appellant did exercise ordinary care in constructing and maintaining said walk, and was in the due exercise of such care in maintaining said walk at the time of said injury.” It is virtually conceded by counsel for plaintiff in error that if the foregoing is, within the meaning of the statute, to be regarded as a finding of the facts, it is conclusive of the case in this court, and the judgment of the Appellate Court must necessarily be affirmed. It is urged, however, that the findings of the Appellate Court are mere conclusions upon the facts, rather than the findings of the facts themselves. If by “conclusions upon the facts,” counsel mean “conclusions of fact,”--or, in other words, inferences drawn from the subordinate or evidentiary facts,--the statement to that extent may be conceded, and yet it does not at all militate against the conclusiveness of the findings. In all cases the ultimate fact or facts to be established in a suit, and upon which the rights of the parties to it necessarily depend, are, when considered with reference to the facts or evidence by which they are established or proved, but the logical results of the proofs,--or, in other words, mere conclusions of fact. Yet these logical results of the proofs or conclusion of facts, when considered with reference to the basis...