Maran v. Peabody

• Decision Date: 27 November 1917
• Citation: 228 Mass. 432
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: MAY MARAN v. FRANCIS PEABODY, JR., & another, trustees.

228 Mass. 432

MAY MARAN v. FRANCIS PEABODY, JR., & another, trustees.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

November 27, 1917

October 17, 1917.

Present: RUGG, C J., BRALEY, DE COURCY, & PIERCE, JJ.

Negligence, Of one controlling real estate. Landlord and Tenant. Covenant.

Where a salesgirl whose employer occupies a part of the first and second floors of a city building, has occasion in the course of her duty to go from the second to the first floor and is forbidden to use the elevator, if she attempts to descend a marble staircase with which she is familiar and on which she knows that the electric lamps are not lighted, this staircase being the only way open to her of getting to the floor below, and holding by the hand rail falls at the first turn by reason of the insufficient lighting of the stairway, in an action by her against the owner of the building for her injuries thus sustained, there is evidence of her due care to be submitted to the jury.

In the action above described it appeared that the defendant, who as the owner of the building had retained control of the elevator and the common stairways, had provided the means and had assumed the duty of lighting the halls and common stairways, that the staircase on which the plaintiff fell wound round the elevator, that the only natural light that reached any part of the stairs came through certain glass doors and through certain crinkled-glass partitions on a hallway on the second floor which was "dark and gloomy" and that although there was an electric lamp in front of the elevator and another one close to the stairs, neither of them was lighted, that the weather was cloudy and that the elevator when going up and down cast lights and shadows on the stairs. Held, that a finding was warranted that, in order to render this stairway reasonably safe for the plaintiff's use at the time of the accident, the defendant should have provided artificial light and that he failed to perform that duty.

In the same case it appeared that the plaintiff's employer had covenanted in his lease that the lessor should not "be liable to the lessee, or to any other person for any injury, loss or damage to any person or property on the premises, or in the" building. The stairway on which the accident happened was not leased to the plaintiff's employer. Held, that, whatever might be the respective rights of the landlord and the tenant under this covenant, it did not deprive the plaintiff of her remedy against the owner of the building, whose negligence caused her injury.

TORT against the trustees of the Standish Building Trust, so called, as the owners of a building numbered 367 on Boylston Street in Boston, for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff, who was a salesgirl in the employ of a tenant occupying portions of the first and second floors of the building, on the morning of June 14, 1915, by reason of the plaintiff falling when, having been excluded from the use of the elevator, she was descending from the second to the first floor on a marble staircase that wound round the elevator and was lighted insufficiently. Writ dated December 16, 1915.

In the Superior Court the case was tried before O'Connell, J. The evidence is described in the opinion. At the close of the evidence the defendants asked the judge to order a verdict for them. This the judge refused to do. The defendants then asked the judge to make the following rulings:

"If the plaintiff for a period of five or six years had used the stairway on which she fell on an average of twelve times a day, and if on going up the stairway...