Colby v. Inhabitants of Pittsfield

• Decision Date: 03 August 1915
• Parties: COLBY v. INHABITANTS OF PITTSFIELD (two cases).
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

95 A. 1

COLBY

v. INHABITANTS OF PITTSFIELD (two cases).

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Aug. 3, 1915.

Exceptions from Supreme Judicial Court, Somerset County, at Law.

Actions by John Colby and Ellen J. Colby against the Inhabitants of the Town of Pittsfield. Plaintiffs were nonsuited, and they excepted. Exceptions overruled.

Argued before SAVAGE, C. J., and SPEAR, CORNISH, BIRD, and PHILBROOK, JJ.

T. A. Anderson, of Pittsfield, Morse & Cook, of Bangor, and H. C. Buzzell, of Belfast, for plaintiffs. Manson & Coolidge and H. H. Thurlough, all of Pittsfield, for defendants.

SPEAR, J. These cases are to be considered together and involve actions against the defendant town for alleged injuries received from an accident caused by an alleged defect in the highway. Both cases were nonsuited at nisi prius for want of a valid 14 days' notice, and come here on exceptions to this ruling.

The only question raised by the exceptions is the sufficiency of the notice, which reads as follows:

"Pittsfield, Maine, October 23, 1912.

"Selectmen of the Town of Pittsfield, Pittsfield, Maine—Gentlemen: I hereby notify you that on the 9th day of October, A. D. 1912, while driving along the road and while near the Waverly Bridge, that John Colby and Ellen J. Colby, both of Montville in the county of Waldo and state of Maine, were thrown into the river through lack of proper railing or fence along the road near Waverly Bridge on the west side of the Sebasticook river, and just south of the Waverly Bridge and very near to an electric light pole near said Waverly Bridge, and that the said Ellen J. Colby has suffered a great deal both in mind and body on account of the injury which she received by being thrown into the river; that her body was badly bruised and that she claims damages from the inhabitants of the town of Pittsfield for the injuries which she has sustained in the sum of two thousand dollars.

"That John Colby received injuries by being thrown into the river near Waverly Bridge just south of the bridge on the west side of the Sebasticook river and very near to the electric light pole near said south side of the bridge on the west end of the bridge in that his body was bruised and that he has suffered a great deal in both mind and body from the injuries which he sustained by being thrown into the river through lack of proper railing along the river near said Waverly Bridge on the west side of the Sebasticook river and by reason of the injuries sustained by him the said John Colby he claims damages from the inhabitants of the town of Pittsfield to the sum of two thousand dollars."

As to the physical injuries alleged to have been sustained, the notice contains only this specification, "that her body was badly bruised."...