Harrington v. Greidanus, 19.

• Decision Date: 17 May 1932
• Docket Number: No. 19.,19.
• Parties: HARRINGTON v. GREIDANUS.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

160 A. 652

HARRINGTON

v. GREIDANUS.

No. 19.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

May 17, 1932.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Essex County.

Action by John Harrington, by next friend, against Taco Greidanus. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. On reinstatement of appeal after dismissal in 157 A. 384.

Reversed.

Argued January term, 1932, before GUMMERE, C. J., and PARKER and CASE, JJ.

Edward L. Davis, of Orange, for appellant.

Anard W. Littman, of Orange, for respondent.

PER CURIAM.

The appeal in this case was dismissed, 157 A. 384, 9 N. J. Misc. R. 1340, but was reinstated and is now before us on the merits.

There are six grounds of appeal, but only the first and second point to any judicial ruling. The others are therefore disregarded.

Grounds 1 and 2 are that the court erred in refusing to nonsuit, and erred in refusing to direct a verdict for the defendant. The crucial question involved is whether the infant plaintiff was in the place where he was injured by invitation. If not, the defendant owed him no duty of care, and, consequently, questions of negligence are not involved. There is no suggestion of willful injury.

The plaintiff at the time of the accident was a little boy of five years of age, and was, as the jury might find, crossing a passageway or lane running substantially at right angles to Centre street in East Orange; and the defendant was driving his car westerly through the lane for the purpose of reaching the street. The local situation is about as follows: The house in which plaintiff lived is situate on the east side of Centre street. Back of this house, and occupying a tract of some two acres or so in the middle of the block, was a group of individual garages owned by the defendant, and rented out by him to various tenants for the accommodation of their automobiles. From this inside lot the lane in question ran westerly and south of the plaintiff's house and immediately abutting the house lot. The land over which this lane or passageway ran and on which the garages stood, was owned by the defendant, and also a small irregular shaped piece of land to the south of the lane called "the grass plot." We gather from the testimony that the north side of the lane was about two feet from the plaintiff's house. The evidence tends to show that the plaintiff and other children of the neighborhood were accustomed to play on this so-called grass plot, but there is nothing to show that it was by any invitation of the defendant. Indeed, he claimed in his testimony that they were forbidden to do so, but...