Lindsey v. Leighton

• Decision Date: 30 November 1889
• Parties: LINDSEY v. LEIGHTON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

150 Mass. 285
22 N.E. 901

LINDSEY
v.
LEIGHTON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Nov. 30, 1889.

Exceptions from superior court, Worcester county; BLODGETT, Judge.

It was conceded that the record title to the premises on which the accident happened was in the wife of the defendant. The plaintiff occupied a tenement in the basement of a tenement block on the west side of High street, in Clinton. To reach it, he had to go down a flight of stairs on the outside of the block. The stairs were about eight feet from the west edge of the sidewalk, and ran down towards the building beside a bank wall, which, extended, was on a line with the front of the block. The upper platform to the stairway was about four feet square, had a railing around two sides, but no railing against the wall, and was raised a foot above the top of the bank wall; the top of the wall being on a grade with the sidewalk. The first stair below this upper platform was three inches above the top of the bank wall, and the second stair about three inches below. The plaintiff claimed, and testified, that about 11 o'clock, on the night of October 11, 1888, when going to his tenement, he stepped onto this upper platform, and that the board or plank on which he stepped tipped, and threw him down the stairs, causing the injuries complained of. Upon the question whether the plaintiff was the tenant of the defendant, there was evidence tending to show that in November, 1887, the plaintiff called upon the defendant, and asked him if he had a tenement to let to the plaintiff, and the defendant said, “Yes,” and gave the plaintiff the key to the tenement, which the plaintiff afterwards occupied; that there was talk about defendant setting some broken glass and doing some whitewashing, and that defendant said he should not do much in the way of repairs, because he intended to make a change in the building; that the rent to be paid was six dollars per month, and the plaintiff paid the rent in full each month from December 1, 1887, to October, 1888, to the defendant in person, with one or two exceptions, receiving from the defendant receipts therefor, which the defendant testified were signed by him, except one or more which were signed in his name by his daughter, and with the further exception that some of the receipts might have been signed in his name by his wife, as his attorney, but that his signature by her did not appear on any of the receipts introduced by the plaintiff; that after the...