Gilbert v. City of Boston

• Decision Date: 11 May 1885
• Citation: 139 Mass. 313,31 N.E. 734
• Parties: Elizabeth T. Gilbert v. City of Boston[1]
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

139 Mass. 313

31 N.E. 734

Elizabeth T. Gilbert v. City of Boston^[1]

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

May 11, 1885

Argued March 10, 1885

Suffolk.

Tort for personal injuries occasioned to the plaintiff by an alleged defect in Dorchester Street, in Boston, on January 16, 1883. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Bacon J., the evidence was as follows, on the issue whether the plaintiff was in the exercise of due care:

The plaintiff and her niece were crossing together, arm in arm from West Seventh Street to the southeasterly side of Dorchester Street, upon a crosswalk, which was throughout its entire length in good condition and free from defects excepting that portion of it at and immediately surrounding the place where the defect contributing to the injury existed, and this defective portion was an accumulation of rough and uneven snow and ice lying upon the crosswalk within a distance of four feet from the southeasterly sidewalk of Dorchester Street. At that distance such accumulation began on a line with the level of the street, and extended, increasing in thickness, to a ridge upon the edge of a ditch cut in the snow near the edgestone of the sidewalk, giving to the ridge upon the crossing at this edge of the ditch a thickness, including the flagging, of fifteen inches, where it formed the outer wall of the ditch, and six or eight inches above the level of the sidewalk, while the edgestone of the walk formed the inner wall of the ditch. The top of this accumulation, running along the edge of the ditch, was four inches in width; the ditch was twelve inches wide, with its outer wall about fifteen inches, and its inner wall about seven inches, in depth. Upon the edge of the sidewalk in front of the crosswalk, and extending several feet along the sidewalk, was a strip of slippery and thin glare ice, ten to fourteen inches in width; the sidewalk inside of this glare ice was perfectly clear and safe. The accumulation of snow and ice was very steep, rough, and slippery and ridgy, and consisted of blocks and lumps of snow and ice on the edge of the ditch, heaped up and thrown together by workmen in digging the ditch through the snow to clear the street gutters, and afterwards frozen together there in a very rough form, and about six or eight inches higher than the rest of the accumulation on the crossing.

The plaintiff testified that, before beginning to ascend this accumulation, she saw that it was in this condition "and looked for a place to go over easier," but on finding the condition of the street near there, on...