Laflin v. Lomas & Nettleton Co.
| Decision Date | 16 July 1940 |
| Parties | LAFLIN v. LOMAS & NETTLETON CO. |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
Appeal from Superior Court, Hartford County; Alfred C. Baldwin Judge.
Action by Esther T. Laflin against Lomas & Nettleton Company trustee, to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the defendant, brought to the superior court and tried to the jury. There was a verdict for plaintiff, which the court set aside, and from this decision plaintiff appeals.
No error.
Robert L. Halloran and J. Ronald Regnier, both of Hartford, for appellant (plaintiff).
Warren Maxwell, of Hartford, for appellee (defendant).
Argued before MALTBIE, C.J., and AVERY, BROWN, JENNINGS, and ELLS JJ.
The plaintiff, a tenant in an apartment house owned by the defendant, brought this action to recover for injuries suffered when she fell by reason of tripping over a toy automobile left on the step at the outer entrance of the building. She recovered a verdict which the trial court set aside and she has appealed. The decisive issue presented upon the appeal is whether the toy had been in a position to subject persons coming out of the entrance to danger for a sufficient length of time so that the defendant should have had notice of it. There was no direct testimony as to the length of time it had been there. The following facts appear in evidence: The only child in the apartment house was a three-year-old boy; on the morning of the accident he had played in the court outside the entrance while his mother was washing the windows of a first-floor apartment. She finished about 10 o'clock and then the boy went around to the back of the building to play. She testified that the toy was similar to toys which the boy had had previous to the accident but could not identify the particular toy as one of his. There was no evidence that he had been playing with a similar toy that morning. The fall of the plaintiff occurred between 11.15 and 11.30 o'clock in the morning. The plaintiff testified that she had been in her apartment all the morning previous to leaving it at the time of the accident; that the tenants of the building using the entrance usually left about 8:30 in the morning; that she could hear when persons passed through it; and that she heard no one using it after that hour and was quite sure that she would have heard anyone who did so. It also appeared in evidence that other people than the tenants, such as tradesmen insurance agents, and the like, at times did use the entrance, and that children from an adjoining building at times played in the courtyard, although the janitor, who was on vacation at the time of the accident, drove them away whenever he discovered them. Upon the basis of this testimony, the plaintiff claimed that the toy was left where it was when the plaintiff tripped over it, by the boy living in the apartment, at the time or before he went to the rear of the building. The trial court set the verdict aside upon the ground that the jury could not reasonably draw such an inference, and so concluded that the defendant was chargeable with notice of its presence.
We cannot find error in its ruling because there are too many possibilities that the toy was placed on the step at the entrance of the apartment, by someone other than the boy. Aside from the fact that the testimony of the plaintiff is a weak basis for concluding that no one used the entrance between the time the boy left and the time when she fell, the toy might have been placed on the step either by some other child playing in the courtyard or might have been left in the courtyard and placed there by someone who might have been passing through it. These and other possible explanations of the presence of the toy make the evidence insufficient to produce a reasonable belief of the probability that the boy placed it in the position where it was when the plaintiff fell. Drible v. Village Improvement Co., 123 Conn 20, 24, 192 A. 308; Williamson's Appeal, 123 Conn. 424, 433, 196 A. 770. As there was no other basis upon which the...
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