City of Louisville v. Laufer

• Decision Date: 28 October 1910
• Citation: 140 Ky. 457,131 S.W. 192
• Parties: CITY OF LOUISVILLE v. LAUFER.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

131 S.W. 192

140 Ky. 457

CITY OF LOUISVILLE v. LAUFER.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

October 28, 1910

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County, Common Pleas Branch Third Division.

Action by Frank Laufer against the City of Louisville. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Huston Quin and Clayton B. Blakey, for appellant.

Norton L. Goldsmith and Walter S. Lapp, for appellee.

CLAY C.

Appellee Frank Laufer, while going to work on the night of July 4 1908, stepped into a hole in the sidewalk on the north side of Laurel street, between Jackson and Hancock streets, in the city of Louisville, and brought this action to recover damages for the injury received. A jury returned a verdict in his favor in the sum of $300. From the judgment based thereon, this appeal is prosecuted.

It is first insisted that the facts of this case show that the condition of the sidewalk was similar to the condition of the sidewalk developed in the case of City of Covington v Belser, 123 S.W. 249, and for that reason the court erred in failing to award appellant a peremptory instruction. While it is true that appellant's evidence tends to show that the depression in the pavement was only about an inch deep, the evidence for the appellee is to the effect that the hole in the sidewalk was three or four feet long and two or three feet wide. In this hole there were no bricks regularly set. The hole was partly filled with loose bricks, some standing up and others lying flat. In the Belser Case, while several witnesses testified that the pavement was an awfully rocky looking affair, yet, when they came to specify its precise condition, it appears that the pavement was practically smooth, and here and there was a brick which projected above the other bricks only a slight distance, and that the brick against which Mrs. Belser claims to have struck her foot projected about an inch above the other bricks. Here the evidence shows that there was practically no pavement at all at the point where appellee was injured. The photograph before us, which was taken shortly after the accident, and which several witnesses say is a correct reproduction of the pavement at the place of the accident, shows that the depression was a large one, if not very deep. This may not of itself have rendered the pavement dangerous to pedestrians, but when taken in connection with the fact that the depression had in it loose bricks lying...