Lee v. Jerome Realty, Inc.
| Decision Date | 03 December 1958 |
| Citation | 154 N.E.2d 126,338 Mass. 150 |
| Parties | Walter R. LEE v. JEROME REALTY, Inc. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Seymour Weinstein, Worcester, for plaintiff.
Philip J. MacCarthy, Worcester, for defendant.
Before WILKINS, C. J., and WILLIAMS, COUNIHAN, WHITTEMORE, and CUTTER, JJ.
This is an action of tort to recover for personal injuries received on March 3, 1952, from a fall into an elevator well at 85 Prescott Street, Worcester, a four story building owned by the defendant. The plaintiff was employed as a supply handler by Paper Craft Greeting Card Company which occupied the second and third floors of the building under lease from the defendant. The basement or first floor and the fourth floor were occupied by other tenants. The lessor maintained a freight elevator for the common use of all of its lessees. It was of ordinary platform type operated by a shipper rope and could be stopped at any floor by adjusting a latch on the rope. A gate was provided at each floor which was designed to fall by gravity and to bar the opening into the well when the elevator left the floor. When the elevator was at any floor the gate could be raised manually and held in place by a kind of hook called a 'duckbill' until released by the motion of the elevator. The fall of the gate was regulated to some extent by means of a counter weight. There was evidence that on March 3, 1952, the plaintiff, who had been employed by the card company for several months, was working on the second floor and was engaged in sending up to the third floor skids of cards which be brought to the elevator by a hand truck. He had been sending up these loads of cards every ten or fifteen minutes during the morning. The elevator then seemed to be working properly. About 1:00 P. M. he pulled a truck loaded with skids of cards to the entrance of the elevator and noticed that the elevator was at the floor level and that the gate was up. He pushed the truck back some ten feet in order to get momentum to pull it over some rough boards to the elevator and then backed toward the elevator pulling the truck after him. For some reason the elevator had gone up. The gravity gate had not come down, and the plaintiff went through the opening and fell to the bottom of the well.
An elevator inspector for the city came shortly thereafter and found that the gate on the second floor was 'stuck open'; that the rope connecting the gate with the counter weight was 'caught'; that the gate was a 'little out of square' with its runway and (refreshing his recollection) that 'the gate was out of the runway.' A motion by the defendant for a directed verdict was denied subject to its exception, and the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff.
The obligation of the defendant in respect to the maintenance of its elevator comes within the rule as to common hallways and stairways which remain in the control of the lessor. Andrews v. Williamson, 193 Mass. 92, 94, 78 N.E. 737; Flanagan v. Welch, 220...
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