Looney v. McLean
Decision Date | 25 June 1880 |
Citation | 129 Mass. 33 |
Parties | Ellen Looney v. Archibald McLean |
Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Argued November 17, 1879
Suffolk. Tort for personal injuries occasioned to the plaintiff by a fall from a staircase in a dwelling-house in Boston, owned or occupied by the defendant. Trial in this court, before Ames J., who allowed a bill of exceptions in substance as follows:
The defendant was in the habit of letting tenements in the house in question to various tenants. The plaintiff's husband hired a tenement of the defendant, and began to occupy it on May 11, 1878. There was evidence that, at that time, the defendant pointed out the top of an outbuilding, connected with the house, as the place where the plaintiff was to hang out clothes for drying. There was a staircase in two flights leading from the ground of the back yard to the top of the outbuilding; and the plaintiff, on May 15, while going up the stairs to hang out her clothes for drying upon the roof received the injuries complained of, in consequence of the giving way of one of the steps of the staircase. It was admitted that the defendant knew that the stairs were greatly decayed and unsafe, and there was no evidence that he cautioned or notified the plaintiff that they were so. The tenants in the building were in the habit of passing through the rooms on the second story occupied by a tenant, when they had occasion to go to said roof. Whether this access to the roof was pointed out to the plaintiff was in dispute, and the evidence on that point was conflicting. There was no other visible external means of access to the roof except by the above described stairs. It was in evidence that the stairs had been substantially disused for many years. Some of the witnesses testified that two of the steps were broken away and had wholly disappeared, two years before the accident. The plaintiff testified that only one step was missing, and that she undertook to go up the stairs, not knowing that there was any other access, and, on cross-examination, testified that when she began to go up the steps she heard a crack under her feet, and felt a sort of yielding under her, but made haste to go up without any further examination into the condition of the stairs.
The defendant asked the judge to rule as follows:
The judge declined so to rule, and instructed the jury as follows: ...
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