Hart Packing Co. v. Guild

• Decision Date: 30 January 1925
• Parties: HART PACKING CO. v. GUILD.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

251 Mass. 43

146 N.E. 238

HART PACKING CO.

v.GUILD.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Jan. 30, 1925.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Suffolk County; G. Sanderson, Judge.

Action of tort by the Hart Packing Company against Courtenay Guild, doing business as Curtis Guild & Co., to recover for injuries to property caused by water coming from defendant's premises on goods of plaintiff, who occupied premises underneath. Verdict for plaintiff, and defendant excepts. Exceptions sustained.

J. T. Pugh, of Boston, for plaintiff.

E. I. Taylor, of Boston, for defendant.

PIERCE, J.

This is an action of tort to recover damages for injuries to certain personal property of the plaintiff, on September 30, 1922, in consequence of water coming from the premises of the defendant. The plaintiff and defendant were tenants of a common landlord. The plaintiff occupied under a lease the entire half of the second floor at No. 144 High street, Boston, with the exception of a small room on the side. Under a similar lease, the defendant occupied on September 30, 1922, and had occupied since February, 1913, the whole of the third floor of the building numbered 142 to 146 High street, Boston.

At the trial before a jury evidence was introduced that water, on September 30, 1922, dripped ‘pretty fast’ from a matched board ceiling over an area five feet square and a quantity of cardboard boxes, saturated the stock, and damaged it. There was evidence that above the ceiling where the leakage occurred on the premises of the defendant, there was a toilet room, in which ‘there was a washbasin, a flush closet and a urinal.’ There was evidence that there was a main supply pipe for water which came into the room and went ‘right up through the building,’ and that from this pipe there were branches ‘one to the urinal, one to the flush closet, and one to the washbasin’; that at the back of the urinal there was a marble slab parallel with the wall of the building; that ‘after some difficulty’ a plumber located the leak behind the marble slab, ‘it couldn't be seen from the front,’ and there ‘found a small slit, just a small crack in the pipe, the urinal supply pipe, which was a lead pipe, probably five-eighths of an inch in diameter.’

There was no positive evidence of the age of the urinal supply pipe, nor of its being the original pipe. There were two bends in this pipe near the place of the slit, one in each side of the urinal, one going up and one running down to the washbasin. The faucet in the pipe had a self-closing spring; this snaps the water off much faster than a ‘compression cock,’ which turns by hand, if one lets go of it quick; such a faucet has been long in common use. When the faucet is turned off sharply, the pipe resists ‘in the weakest part of the pipes in the building,’ in this...