Lane v. Groetz
| Decision Date | 30 June 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 5553,5553 |
| Citation | 230 A.2d 741,108 N.H. 173 |
| Parties | Marion F. LANE et al. v. Catherine M. GROETZ, Adm'x. |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Perkins, Holland & Donovan and William H. M. Beckett, Exeter, for plaintiffs.
Devine, Millimet, McDonough, Stahl & Branch and Joseph M. McDonough III, Manchester, for defendant.
In December 1960, the plaintiff, Mrs. Lane, was employed as a practical nurse to care for the defendant's intestate, Miss O'Neil, a woman who according to the evidence 'had hardening of the arteries' and whose 'mental condition was very bad.' The plaintiffs' evidence tended to show that Miss O'Neil's house was in the charge of Mrs. Mattison, who paid the nurses with funds belonging to Miss O'Neil by checks issued by Mrs. Mattison's son. The plaintiff testified that as a practical nurse she took 'care of hospital cases, people in nursing homes and hospitals,' but the nature of her duties while employed by Miss O'Neil was not disclosed.
Mrs. Lane testified that on January 10, 1961, 'there was about three foot of snow piled up side of the road' in Exeter, and the streets were very icy, and had been for several days. Prior to January 10, 1961, the nurses working at Miss O'Neil's had found it necessary, in order to gain access to the house from the street, to reach the main sidewalk by means of a driveway to an adjoining house, and then to proceed by the main sidewalk to a walkway to a side door of the O'Neil house.
On January 9, 1961, Mrs. Lane overheard Mrs. Mattison call 'the town' by telephone and ask that a man be furnished to shovel a path from the street to the sidewalk at the O'Neil house, for which Mrs. Mattison offered to pay. On the same day, Mrs. Mattison asked Mrs. Lane to bring some bakery goods to the house when she came on duty the next afternoon, and furnished her funds with which to purchase them.
On January 10, 1961, Mrs. Lane proceeded by taxi from her home in Exeter to the O'Neil house, where she found a narrow path newly shoveled in front of the house. Her taxi stopped in the street just short of the end of the path, and the plaintiff undertook to enter the path toward the sidewalk, carrying her 'nurse's bag,' and three boxes of bakery products tied together with string. Although the taxi driver offered her assistance, she declined it. Her view of the path was obscured by what she was carrying, and as she took two steps to enter the pathway her foot slipped and she fell in the street with her feet in the pathway. As a result she fractured her leg. There was evidence that the path crossed a metal grating located in a depression in the street and that the grating and the pathway were ice covered. Mrs. Lane testified that 'it was the iron of the drain,' and 'the slant and the ice there' which caused her to fall.
Whether Mrs. Lane had the status of an employee of Miss O'Neil, or of an independent contractor (see Annot. 60 A.L.R. 303), it was the duty of Miss O'Neil, or of those acting with authority on her behalf, to furnish Mrs. Lane with a reasonably safe place to work. Moore v. Morse & Malloy Shoe Company, 89 N.H. 332, 333, 197 A. 707. See 27 Am.Jur. 510, Independent Contractors, s. 30; Annot. 31 A.L.R.2d 1375, 1379. The evidence does not admit of a finding that the plaintiff's work place included the public street. The argument that the decedent failed to provide the plaintiff with a reasonably safe place to perform the work which she was hired to do is not supported by the record. In entering upon the decedent's premises, Mrs. Lane did so as an invitee, to whom Miss O'Neil owed the duty of taking reasonable care to see that the premises were reasonably safe. Mutterperl v. Lake Spofford Hotel, Inc., 106 N.H. 538, 541, 216 A.2d 35; Jacobson v. Yoken's Inc., 104 N.H. 331, 186 A.2d 148. See Dowd v. Portsmouth Hospital, 105 N.H. 53, 193 A.2d 788, 95 A.L.R.2d 986. This duty, however, related only to the premises which the decedent possessed or over which she had control. Gossler v. Miller, 107 N.H. 303, 221 A.2d 249; Paine v. Hampton Beach &c. Co., 98 N.H. 359, 364, 100 A.2d 906; Morin v. Manchester Housing Authority, 105 N.H. 138, 139, 195 A.2d 243; see Restatement (Second), Torts, s. 349; Restatement (Second), Agency, s. 497, comment c.
As to the abutting street, the decedent's duties were confined to exercising reasonable care to see that activities conducted on her premises, or conditions allowed to exist thereon, posed no threat to users of the public way. Gossler v. Miller, supra: Abell v. Amoskeag Realty Company, 95 N.H. 436, 65 A.2d 870; Montrone v. Archambault, 99 N.H. 179, 106 A.2d 393; McLean v. Parkwood, Inc., 354 F.2d 770 (1st Cir.1966...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Newell v. Mont. W., Inc.
...across adjoining highway and not liable to estate of boy killed while crossing highway on return from shopping center); Lane v. Groetz, 108 N.H. 173, 230 A.2d 741 (1967) (homeowner owed no duty to clear ice from street in front of home and not liable to nurse visiting home to care for patie......
-
Chouinard v. NH SPEEDWAY
...469 F.Supp. 199 (E.D.Mich.1979) (citing Gustin v. Sun Life Assur. Co. of Canada, 154 F.2d 961 (6th Cir.1946)). In Lane v. Groetz, 108 N.H. 173, 230 A.2d 741 (1967), the plaintiff, a practical nurse by profession, slipped on a plowed portion of a street that was adjacent to the home owned by......
-
Barrett v. Foster Grant Co., Civ. A. No. 2944.
...on the premises at the express invitation and for the benefit of the owner. This view is supported by the language in Lane v. Groetz, 108 N.H. 173, 230 A.2d 741 (1967). There the Court Whether the plaintiff had the status of an employee of the defendant, or of an independent contractor, it ......
-
Wilson v. NOOTER CORPORATION, No. 74-1056
...tort doctrine). In contrast, the New Hampshire court held that the inherent-danger doctrine was inapplicable in Lane v. Groetz, 108 N.H. 173, 230 A.2d 741 (1967), where an independent contractor shoveled a path in the snow directly across a metal grating, causing an unwary pedestrian to sli......