Killian v. Logan
| Decision Date | 02 August 1932 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | KILLIAN v. LOGAN et al. |
Appeal from Superior Court, Fairfield County; Carl Foster, Judge.
Action by Mary C. Killian against John T. Logan and others to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff through negligence of defendants in the maintenance of a fire escape, brought to the superior court and tried to the jury. Verdict rendered for defendants at the direction of the court, and from an order refusing to set aside the verdict, plaintiff appeals.
Error and new trial ordered.
Argued before MALTBIE, C.J., and HAINES, HINMAN, BANKS, and AVERY JJ.
Repairs made before accident tend to prove retention of control by party making repairs.
John H. Mountain, Jr., of Bridgeport, for appellant.
Arthur M. Comley, of Bridgeport, for appellees.
The defendants were the owners of a four story building in Bridgeport of which part of the first floor was leased to the Logan Brothers Company, and the remainder of the building to the Connecticut Company for its general business offices. In the evening of April 4, 1930, while the plaintiff, who was employed by the Connecticut Company as telephone operator was engaged in her duties on the second floor of the building, a fire started on the first floor and filled the only stairway with smoke so that the plaintiff was obliged to make use of a fire escape which the defendants had caused to be constructed on the outside of the building. This fire escape was of a type known as a counter-hinged stair. From a landing outside the second floor windows about eighteen or twenty feet above the street, an iron ladder or stairway extended horizontally, being hinged at one end to the landing and held at the other by a chain, running over a pulley, and attached to a counterweight. When the fire escape was erected in 1921 the counterweight was so adjusted that when a person weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds walked out halfway on the horizontal stairway, the outer end would descend to the ground, and this was the manner in which it was designed to operate. The plaintiff and a night watchman, also employed by the Connecticut Company, went upon the landing and walked, the plaintiff ahead and the man following closely, out upon the stairway. It was dark, but the plaintiff put her hands on the railings and felt her way along until she came to the end, recognizing this because she put her foot out and could find no more steps. The stairway remained in the horizontal position until they both reached the extreme outer end, when it dropped suddenly with great force, and the plaintiff was thrown off and injured. Most of the foregoing facts were undisputed; the others the jury could reasonably have found.
The trial court directed a verdict for the defendants and this appeal is from the refusal to set aside that verdict. As the record does not include a transcript of the statement of the trial court, if any was made, in directing the verdict, and no memorandum of decision accompanied the denial of the motion to set it aside, we lack authoritative information as to the respects in which the case made by the plaintiff on the evidence was held to be so lacking as to justify a directed verdict. The briefs of the parties indicate that the verdict was directed on the grounds of failure of proof of control of the fire escape by the defendants and the consequent duty of inspection, maintenance, and repair, and of negligence on the part of the defendants, and we consider the appeal on that basis.
The defendants claim that the plaintiff offered no evidence that the defendants retained control of the fire escape. It was in evidence and not disputed that they caused it to be erected in 1921 and to be painted in 1924 and again in 1928, and that in March 1931, they procured a test to be made of the working of the stairway. Repairs either before or after an accident tend to prove retention of control by the party making them. Vinci v. O'Neill, 103 Conn. 647, 652, 131 A. 408. There was no evidence of repair or other indicia of control by tenants or others. The statutes concerning fire escapes, sections 2613, 2614, 2615, and 2616, General Statutes, impose the duty of providing them, on any building for which they are required, upon the owner of such buildings. The plaintiff claims that the obligation to provide imports and includes not only erection, in the first instance, but also a duty to thereafter maintain and keep in repair. Be that as it may, continued control in the owner who is required to provide a fire escape and does so fairly may be inferred in the absence of evidence of a transfer of that control and the accompanying duties or assumption thereof by persons other than the owner. If the defendants maintained control of...
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Stanolind Oil & Gas Co. v. Bunce, 1937
...458; Hilson v. Pacific Gas & El. Co., 131 Cal.App. 427, 21 P.2d 662; Bergen v. Tulare Power Co., 173 Cal. 709, 161 P. 269; Killian v. Logan, 115 Conn. 437, 162 A. 30; Jump v. Ensign-Bickford Co., 117 Conn. 167 A. 90. And see Van Horn v. Refining & Roofing Co., 27 Cal.App. 105, 148 P. 951. I......
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Giles v. City of New Haven
...actual use of the instrument, therefore does not, in and of itself, bar application of the doctrine. See Killian v. Logan, 115 Conn. 437, 440-42, 162 A. 30 (1932) (doctrine applied to action for injuries caused by negligent maintenance of fire escape used by plaintiff when injury occurred);......
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Smith v. Town of Greenwich, 17555.
...is at issue in the suit. See, e.g., Williams v. Milner Hotels Co., 130 Conn. 507, 510,36 A.2d 20 (1944); Killian v. Logan, 115 Conn. 437, 439, 162 A. 30 (1932). . . . The existence of these exceptions to the general rule illustrates that the strength of the public policy supporting the rule......
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Wagner v. Clark Equipment Co., Inc.
...is at issue in the [action]. See, e.g., Williams v. Milner Hotels Co., 130 Conn. 507, 510, 36 A.2d 20 (1944); Killian v. Logan, 115 Conn. 437, 439, 162 A. 30 (1932). Other courts have established numerous other bases for the admission of the evidence, while retaining the basic rule of exclu......