Clark v. Pierce & Norton Co. Inc.

• Decision Date: 05 January 1945
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: CLARK v. PIERCE & NORTON CO., Inc.

131 Conn. 499

40 A.2d 752

CLARK v. PIERCE & NORTON CO., Inc.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Jan. 5, 1945.

Appeal from Superior Court, New Haven County; Alcorn, Judge.

Action by Charlotte Clark against Pierce & Norton Company, Inc., to recover damages for personal injuries, alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the defendant and by a nuisance created and maintained by it, brought to the Superior Court in New Haven County and tried to the court, Alcorn, J.; judgment for the defendant and appeal by the plaintiff.

No error.

Nathan A. Resnik, of New Haven, and Cornelius T. Driscoll, of Branford, for appellant.

Harrison D. Schofield and John W. Joy, both of Hartford, for appellee.

Before MALTBIE, C. J., and BROWN, JENNINGS, ELLS, and DICKENSON, JJ.

ELLS, Judge.

The defendant has for many years owned and operated an amusement resort at Lake Compounce in the town of Bristol. On a plot of ground between an ‘airplane ride’ and a ‘scooter’ building, it maintains a pole carrying wires and a transformer for the purpose of furnishing electricity required for the operation of resort equipment. The pole is braced by a guy wire made of twisted steel strands. The lower end of the wire is fastened to a pipe driven into the ground, and it runs from this fastening to the top of the pole at anangle of about forty-five degrees. The plaintiff, a girl twelve years of age, was walking with other members of her family toward the lake, to watch the activities there, and cut the outside of her left leg above the ankle upon the end of a strand of wire which protruded a distance of about one-quarter of an inch from the cut end of the cable where the latter was wrapped around the anchor pipe six or eight inches above the ground. The present action was brought in two counts, one alleging negligence, and the other, nuisance. The defendant filed a general denial, and a special defense alleging contributory negligence. The trial court concluded that the defendant was not negligent, that the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence and that the defendant did not maintain a nuisance.

A major claim is that the court erred in concluding that the defendant was not negligent. The issue was decided upon the basis of the fact that the plaintiff was an invitee and not a licensee or a trespasser. It is a well-settled rule of law that one who maintains an amusement park and invites the public to use it is bound, like any one else who invites people to come upon his premises for business or pleasure, to exercise reasonable care to have and keep its premises reasonably safe for such visitors. Turgeon v. Connecticut Co., 84 Conn. 538, 542, 80 A. 714; Bernier v. Woodstock Agricultural Society, 88 Conn. 558, 564, 92 A. 160; Nordgren v. Strong, 110 Conn. 593, 600, 149 A. 201; Skelly v. Pleasure Beach Park Corporation, 115 Conn. 92, 96, 160 A. 309. The plaintiff claims that the defendant was negligent in allowing the end of the projecting strand to protrude from the guy wire or cable so close to the ground as to cause damage to one who might be walking nearby. We find it unnecessary to discuss whether this slight protrusion of one quarter of an inch constituted a defect. If we assume that it did, liability for a breach of the duty to use reasonable...