Gleba v. City Of New Britain.

• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: BROWN, Judge.
• Citation: Gleba v. City Of New Britain., 133 Conn. 85, 48 A.2d 227 (Conn. 1946)
• Decision Date: 12 June 1946
• Parties: GLEBA v. CITY OF NEW BRITAIN.

133 Conn. 85

48 A.2d 227

GLEBA

v.CITY OF NEW BRITAIN.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

June 12, 1946.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Hartford County; Wall, Judge.

Action by Stanley Gleba against the City of New Britain to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been caused by an icy sidewalk. Judgment for plaintiff after trial to the court, and defendant appeals.

No error.

Harold J. Eisenberg, Corporation Counsel, of New Britain, for appellant.

Maurice W. Rosenberg, of New Britain, for appellee.

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

BROWN, Judge.

The plaintiff recovered judgment for damages for personal injuries sustained by a fall upon a sidewalk of the defendant city alleged to have been slippery and defective by reason of snow and ice. The material facts found by the court are not subject to correction and may be thus summarized: On January 19, 1942, the plaintiff had delivered milk at house No. 91 on the southerly side of Belden Street in New Britain. In returning, he stepped on a patch of ice on the public sidewalk just west of the foot of the front steps of the house, his feet slipped and he fell, severely injuring his hand. The cause of his fall was an irregularly shaped piece of ice about two feet long, one and one-half feet wide and two inches thick which was frozen to the sidewalk at that point. Belden Street extends east and west. Its southerly sidewalk is of concrete five feet in width and pitches slightly towards the south edge, which adjoins the foot of a four-foot bank in front of the house. No. 91 is a three-story house and shades the sidewalk in front of it from the sun. This retards the thawing of snow or ice upon the sidewalk. Water from melting snow or ice in front of No. 91 flows along the inner edge of the sidewalk to a point where the driveway crosses the walk east of the steps and thence across the sidewalk to the street gutter.

On January 4, 1942, there was a heavy snowstorm mixed with rain and sleet. From then to the date of the accident there was no material precipitation. After January 4 until noon on January 19 the temperature was below freezing except for these intervals: from 11 a. m. on the 14th to 4 a. m. on the 15th, during which period it averaged about forty degrees; from 8 a. m. on the 18th until after the plaintiff's fall on the 19th. At 8 a. m. on the 19th a a heavy rain began which continued past the noon hour. No sand or ashes had been placed on this ice and there was no evidence that any one had shoveled the walk.

The defendant's attack upon the court's judgment and the conclusions supporting it is well summed up in its final assignment of error in these words: The facts found ‘contain no evidence of the existence of the defect prior to the time of the plaintiff's injury and, therefore, cannot support the conclusions that the neglect was of sufficiently long standing to impute notice to the defendant and that the defect had continued from January 4th to January 19th, without which conclusions the plaintiff must be held not to have proved his case.’ Thus the question determinative of the appeal is whether the facts found warrant the court's inference that the patch of ice upon which the plaintiff fell had existed on the walk since January 4 and thus charged the defendant with the notice of this condition essential to liability. In deciding this question the heavy fall of wet snow of the 4th, the drop in temperature to below freezing which shortly ensued, the lack of any material...