Hayes v. City of Cambridge

• Decision Date: 05 January 1884
• Citation: 136 Mass. 402
• Parties: Anna Hayes v. City of Cambridge
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

136 Mass. 402

Anna Hayes v. City of Cambridge

Supreme Court of Massachusetts

January 5, 1884

Argued November 19, 1883

Middlesex.

Exceptions sustained.

J. W Hammond, for the defendant.

C. T Russell & W. E. Russell, for the plaintiff.

Colburn, J. C. Allen & Holmes, JJ., absent.

OPINION

Colburn, J.

The plaintiff claimed to have received personal injuries in consequence of a defective street crossing in the defendant city, the defective condition of the crossing having been caused by an accumulation of snow and ice thereon, and by the form the snow and ice had taken as the result of the travel over it.

Before the passage of the St. of 1877, c. 234, § 2, (Pub. Sts. c. 52, § 18,) it would have been sufficient to fix the liability of the city to prove the existence of the defect, and that it had continued for a certain time, though it was out of the power of the city to remedy it. George v. Haverhill, 110 Mass. 506. Bodwell v. North Andover, 110 Mass. 511, n. But, since the passage of that statute, the defendant is only liable for an injury or damage through a defect "which might have been remedied, or which damage or injury might have been prevented by reasonable care and diligence" on its part. What is reasonable care and diligence in any given case must depend upon a variety of circumstances. In Rooney v. Randolph, 128 Mass. 580, it was held that the expense of making the streets safe and convenient after a snow-storm, compared with the resources of the town to meet the cost by taxation, was a proper matter for consideration in determining what was reasonable.

In cases of defects from snow and ice, what is reasonable must depend upon the kind and severity of storms, their duration, the extent to which all the ways in a town are rendered unsafe for travel, the labor required to render them safe, the number of men available for the work, the number employed, and the diligence with which the work is prosecuted. There is no reason why one defect should be remedied rather than others of equal importance. If all the ways in a town are defective, some must be rendered safe before others; and, if the town does all that it can, with all the men and means it can procure, to render the ways safe, exercising reasonable discretion as to the order in which the work is done in reference to the importance of the ways, it would seem to be doing all that reasonable care and diligence require, though some defects are allowed to continue while others are being remedied.

The defendant "offered to prove that it made every possible effort to clear the streets of the snow upon the ground; that such was the depth of snow that it was not practically possible for several days after the storm of Sunday, February 5, 1882, to put all the streets in proper condition for public travel; and that the city was proceeding, at...