Durkin v. Lewitz

• Decision Date: 19 October 1954
• Docket Number: Gen. No. 46283
• Parties: Katherine DURKIN, Appellee, v. Jacob A. LEWITZ and Dorothy Lewitz, Defendants. Dorothy Lewitz, Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 151

123 N.E.2d 151

3 Ill.App.2d 481

Katherine DURKIN, Appellee, v. Jacob A. LEWITZ and Dorothy Lewitz, Defendants. Dorothy Lewitz, Appellant.

Gen. No. 46283.

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Second Division.

Oct. 19, 1954.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 16, 1954.

Sears & Streit, Chicago, Barnabas F. Sears, David H. Armstrong, Lloyd J. Tyler, Jr., Chicago, of counsel, for appellant.

Matthew Steinberg and Fred Polacek, Chicago, William C. Wines, Abraham Miller, Chicago, of counsel, for appellee.

SCHWARTZ, Presiding Justice.

Katherine Durkin, plaintiff, was a household employee of the tenants of a second floor apartment in a three-story, six flat building owned by defendants. On December 13, 1950, plaintiff in the performance of her duties fell on some loose ice on the second floor landing, a part of the building under the control of the landlord for the common use of tenants, and suffered severe injuries. Trial by jury resulted in a verdict of $18,000, on which judgment was entered. Subsequent to the filing of this law suit, Jacob Lewitz died and the case proceeded against the remaining defendant.

Plaintiff's theory is that the accumulation of ice on which she fell was due to lessor's negligence in failing to repair a defective roof gutter through which water leaked onto the second floor landing. To support this, Mrs. Shapiro, plaintiff's employer, testified that she had seen the holes in the gutter; that water came through the gutter onto the second floor landing, collected there and froze; that for several days prior to the accident the ice on the landing was about a half-inch thick; that two or three times prior to the accident she had reported the condition of the gutter to defendant's daughter who with her husband lived on the premises and to whom Mrs. Shapiro paid rent, but nothing was done about it. Defendant produced no witnesses to controvert directly any of the testimony offered by plaintiff. It is our conclusion that the testimony amply sustains plaintiff's position. We will presently consider defendant's contention that a verdict should have been directed because testimony on plaintiff's behalf raised only an inference that ice was formed by water leaking from the roof gutter and that this inference was not of sufficient weight to support the finding of the jury.

Defendant's principal argument is directed to the proposition that negligence cannot be predicated upon failure to remove snow and ice. There are many decisions in Illinois in cases in which municipalities or adjoining property owners have been charged with negligence for failure to remove snow and ice accumulated on public ways. There are no Supreme Court cases and only two or three Appellate court cases in which a landlord has been charged with violation of a similar duty. In this climate, whenever negligence is sought to be charged on failure to remove snow and ice, there immediately arises in the mind pictures of great snowstorms creating emergency conditions which have at times made it necessary to mobilize the entire citizenry in order to make paths and clear streets for traffic. It was natural, therefore, that in such cases courts would focus their attention on the difficulties involved in performing a task of this character, rather than on the nature of the particular relationship which gave rise to the alleged obligation. Hence it is that opinions in these cases holding that neither a municipality nor the adjacent property owners are liable contain language which appears broad enough to cover all relationships and all situations, including that of landlord and tenant. Riccitelli v. Sternfeld, 1953, 1 Ill.2d 133, 135, 115 N.E.2d 288, 289, affirming 349 Ill.App. 63, 65, 109 N.E.2d 921; Calhoun v. Corning, 1946, 328 Ill.App. 493, 66 N.E.2d 303; Miklaszewski v. City of Chicago, 1915, 194 Ill.App. 614. This exemption of a municipality and adjoining property owner from liability for injuries resulting from the natural accumulation of snow and ice is the general rule in Illinois, but exceptions are made where some other act of negligence contributes to the condition, as where laundry bags dragged across a snow covered sidewalk created a slippery passage upon which a passerby fell, King v. Swanson, 1919, 216 Ill.App. 294, 297; where a city pipe ejected water which froze on a sidewalk, Hubbard v. City of Wood River, 1927, 244 Ill.App. 414, 417; where an abutting property owner maintained a discharging drain spout, Loyd v. City of East St. Louis, 1925, 235 Ill.App. 353, 357, and where the negligent accumulation of ice was caused by flooding a skating pond adjacent to a sidewalk. Graham v. City of Chicago, 1931, 346 Ill. 638, 178 N.E. 911.

Defendant relies heavily on language used in Riccitelli v. Sternfeld, supra, which involved the liability of a property owner to those using the sidewalk adjoining his property. There, after a heavy snowstorm, the defendant undertook to clear his own premises and to make a pathway on the sidewalk. It was alleged that in so doing he piled the snow in a heap which melted and formed ice on the sidewalk. It was contended that this was negligence and that the sidewalk would have been safer without the path and the adjoining heap of snow and ice. In reversing a judgment for plaintiff, we said we had to start with the proposition that a property owner is under no obligation to clear the sidewalks adjoining his premises, and that the defendant could be held liable only for the commission of a positive negligent act which enhanced the danger existing from natural causes. In the instant case, we must start with a different premise, that is, that the landlord owed a duty to use reasonable care to maintain the particular premises involved in a reasonably safe condition and to inquire whether his failure to remove snow and ice under the circumstances in question constituted a violation of that duty.

Precedents and authorities on this question are divided between those which have adhered more strictly to the common law conception of the lessor-lessee relationship and those which have sought to make the law conform with the reasonable requirements of current custom and usage in land tenure and occupancy. The common law regarded a lease such as the one in question as a grant of an estate for years, with respect to which the lessee had the exclusive right and exclusive responsibility. The lessor was under no obligation to repair or to maintain passageways or other premises used in common by all tenants, nor did he covenant that the premises were fit for the purposes for which they were leased. Viterbo v. Friedlander, 1887, 120 U.S. 708, 7 S.Ct. 962, 30 L.Ed. 776; Fowler v. Bott, 1809, 6 Mass. 63; Bowe v. Hunking, 1883, 135 Mass. 380. The civil law, on the other hand, seems to have had a concept of the relationship much more in keeping with our times. It regarded a lease for use as a transfer of the use and enjoyment of property, and hence a landlord was bound, without any express covenant, to keep the property in repair and otherwise fit for use for the purposes leased. Viterbo v. Friedlander, supra. The common law conception, strictly applied, could hardly prove workable in these days of 40-story office buildings or such an apartment building as that described in Kushner v. Lawton, 1953, 351 Ill.App. 422, 115 N.E.2d 581, which has 740 apartments and a population of about 2,000 Illinois, while adopting the common law rule, has made so many exceptions that like the puppy's tail, it is doubtful whether what is left is longer than what was excised. For example, landlords are held liable for latent defects, Sunasack v. Morey, 1902, 196 Ill. 569, 63 N.E. 1039; for defects which constitute violations of ordinances, Landgraf v. Kuh, 1900, 188 Ill. 484, 59 N.E. 501; Klonowski v. Crescent Paper Box Mfg. Co., 1920, 217 Ill.App. 150; and, in an exception most pertinent to the instant case for injuries caused by negligence in failing to use due care to keep those parts of the premises used in common by tenants in reasonably safe condition. Hartford Deposit Co. v. Sollitt, 1898, 172 Ill. 222, 50 N.E. 178; Murphy v. Illinois State Trust Co., 1940, 375 Ill. 310, 31 N.E.2d 305. But, contends defendant, this general obligation of a landlord does not apply to the removal of snow and ice.

The decisions with respect to removal of snow and ice involving the landlord-tenant relationship upon which defendant relies are Blumberg v. Baird, 1943, 319 Ill.App. 642, 49 N.E.2d 745, and Cronin v. Brownlie, 1952, 348 Ill.App. 448, 456, 109 N.E.2d 352. In Blumberg v. Baird, supra, liability was predicated on the landlord's failure to remove snow and ice from steps. The defendant proved that on the day in question, because of continuous snow, rain, and sleet, the janitor had cleaned the stairs three or four times, as late as an hour and a half before the accident, and had also scattered ashes on the steps. The court said the 'evidence indicates that it would have been impossible to keep the back stairway entirely clear during the continuous snow and rain accompanied by sub-freezing temperature.' It was upon that state of facts that the court made its decision. We do not regard that case as authority for defendant's position in the instant case.

The general language used in Cronin v. Brownlie, supra, in its approval of what is known as the Massachusetts rule, holding that there is no liability with respect to the removal of snow and ice, presents a somewhat different situation. It is true, as stated in that case, that the authorities are in conflict, and that the Massachusetts rule is considered by some to be the majority rule, although to us the authorities appear about equally divided. The following cases support the Massachusetts rule: Woods v. Naumkeag Steam Cotton Co., 1883, 134 Mass. 357; Purcell v. English, 1882, 86 Ind. 34; Rosenberg v. Chapman National Bank, 1927, 126 Me. 403, 139 A. 82, 58 A.L.R. 1405; Oerter v....