Krieg v. Timken

• Decision Date: 08 February 1926
• Citation: 131 A. 905
• Parties: KRIEG v. TIMKEN et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

131 A. 905

KRIEG

v. TIMKEN et al.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Feb. 8, 1926.

Appeal from Supreme Court.

Action by Joseph Krieg against Florence B. Timken and others. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants appeal. Reversed.

Julius Lichtenstein and John D. Pierson, both of Hoboken, for appellants.

Warren Dixon, of Jersey City, for respondent.

GUMMERE, C. J. This was an action brought to recover compensation for injuries sustained by the plaintiff, Krieg, in falling down an areaway leading to the basement of a hotel building in the city of Hoboken. The suit was brought against Timken and others, as owners of the property, and against Harry Braun, as a tenant in possession thereof under a lease from the owners. The allegation of the plaintiff was that this areaway was not properly protected, for the reason that the gate opening upon the steps thereto was hung so that it opened inward instead of outward, and by reason thereof made travel along the street unsafe to anybody who should come in contact with it. The plaintiff further alleged that the city of Hoboken, some time after the lease under which Braun held had been executed, and after he had entered into occupation of the premises passed an ordinance requiring the owners and occupants of premises that had areaways which encroached upon a public street to remove them within a given time; that this ordinance applied to the premises in question; that its requirement was not complied with, either by the owners or by the tenant; that the maintenance of the areaway in violation of the ordinance constituted a public nuisance; and that the accident which happened to the plaintiff was the direct result of the failure of the defendants to abate it. The trial resulted in a verdict against both the landlords and the tenant, and they each of them have appealed from the judgment entered thereon.

More than thirty grounds of appeal have been submitted as justifying a reversal of this judgment. It is only necessary, however, to consider two of them,

The trial court charged the jury, in effect, that, if they should find that the presence of this areaway constituted a public nuisance, the landlords and the tenant would each be liable for injuries received by a third person, directly caused by the continuation of that nuisance; and this instruction is made one of the grounds of appeal by both the landlords and the tenant. So far as the owners of the property are concerned, we are of opinion that...