Lucy v. City of Norwich

• Decision Date: 11 June 1919
• Citation: 106 A. 762,93 Conn. 545
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: LUCY v. CITY OF NORWICH.

106 A. 762

93 Conn. 545

LUCY v. CITY OF NORWICH.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

June 11, 1919

Appeal from Superior Court, New London County; William S. Case Judge.

Action by Mary Lucy against the City of Norwich. After action was commenced, plaintiff died, and her administrator was substituted as plaintiff. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

December 20, 1916, the original plaintiff, Mary Lucy, was injured by falling upon a sidewalk covered with ice and snow located on Main Street in the business center of the city of Norwich. About 9:30 a. m. of that day she left her home to go downtown to do some family shopping. While on her way she passed over the walk in question and observed its icy character. Having finished her errands, she was on her way home at the time she fell.

The walk at the point of accident and for some distance in either direction had a descending grade to the west of from 3 to 4 per cent., and for some distance was so constructed that the slope from the buildings, which bordered upon it, to the curb was much greater from the buildings to its center than from its center outward. Just easterly and above the place of accident was an alleyway with a concrete surface which led on a down grade to the street. The city assumed the care of the sidewalk in front of it, also made of concrete. Owing to the construction of the walk and its surroundings, the tendency of the water falling or forming from melting snow upon either the alleyway or the walk was to flow upon and along the walk for some distance and there to freeze, if the weather was cold enough.

Five days before the plaintiff was injured snow to the depth of five or six inches had fallen. From that time until the 20th there was neither rain nor snow. The snow, easily removable was, following the storm, shoveled off the walk by the tenants of the adjoining property as far east as the alleyway. Before shoveling, however, it had become trampled and packed down by travel so that there remained upon the walk a covering of packed snow which was not removed. The snow which fell in the alleyway and on the crosswalk leading therefrom remained as it fell save for its being trampled down.

During the midday hours of the 17th, 18th, and 19th the snow, as it lay exposed to the rays of the sun in the shelter of the alleyway and upon the walk, softened and melted, and the water therefrom flowed over and along the sidewalk and the packed snow thereon, and thereupon, as the influence of the sun was withdrawn, froze into and upon the packed snow on the walk, making a solid accumulation of ice covering the whole width of the walk. By reason of the condition thus created the walk on the 18th, 19th, and 20th was and continued to be dangerous and unsafe for public travel. During the whole period following the storm neither the city nor any one else did anything to remedy or improve the condition described and make the walk reasonably suitable for public travel except the shoveling off of loose snow by the tenants as hereinbefore stated.

Mrs Lucy having died after the action was commenced, her death was suggested upon the record, and her husband, as administrator, entered to prosecute.

Other facts are stated in the opinion.

Joseph T. Fanning, of Norwich, for appellant.

Thomas M. Shields, of Norwich, for appellee.

PRENTICE, C.J.

The reasons of appeal, considerable in number, may be condensed and stated under four heads, to wit:

(1) That the court erred in holding the defendant liable for negligence in the creation or maintenance of structural defects in and about the sidewalk where Mrs. Lucy fell, whereas the complaint charged no such negligence.

(2) That it erred in finding that Mrs. Lucy...