Nash v. Minneapolis Mill Co.

• Decision Date: 08 April 1878
• Parties: MICHAEL W. NASH <I>vs.</I> MINNEAPOLIS MILL COMPANY and another.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 501

24 Minn. 501

MICHAEL W. NASH vs. MINNEAPOLIS MILL COMPANY and another.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

April 8, 1878.

This was an action to recover damages of the Minneapolis Mill Company and their tenant Dorilus Morrison for alleged negligence in the construction and maintenance of a bridge or platform across a canal owned by the defendant company, and situated in front of the premises leased to Morrison. The cause was tried in the district court for Hennepin county by Young, J., and a jury, and was dismissed upon motion of defendants upon the ground that the plaintiff had failed to make out a cause of action. The plaintiff moved for a new trial, and this motion having been denied, he appealed to this court.

Lochren, McNair & Gilfillan, for appellant.

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Shaw & Levi, for respondent, the Minneapolis Mill Company.

Bradley & Morrison, for respondent Morrison.

GILFILLAN, C. J.

On the trial below, after the plaintiff had closed his case, the court dismissed the action as to both defendants, on the ground that plaintiff had failed to make out a cause of action.

There was evidence sufficient to go to the jury, from which they might have arrived at these conclusions of fact. The mill company owns, in the city of Minneapolis, a strip of land lying along the westerly bank of the Mississippi river, partly above and partly below the falls. Some years ago it constructed, for convenience in using this property for milling purposes, a canal about eighty feet wide at the upper end, and diminishing in width toward the lower end, extending through the strip nearly parallel with the river for the distance of probably one thousand feet. Into this canal the water was taken at the upper end from the pond above the falls, and from the canal was furnished for water-power to the mills along its sides. The land along each side of the canal was let by the company to various tenants for mill sites, and to each tenant a right of way over the canal to the premises so let, granted. The canal for its entire length and breadth was covered with a continuous platform, constructed of timbers and plank, and this platform was, for at least ten years, and with the full knowledge and acquiescence of the defendants, used in common by all who had business with the mills along the canal, in the same manner as a public thoroughfare is used, and that use of it was necessary to the convenient transaction of the business of the mills.

As to that part of the platform where the injury to plaintiff's property occurred, the facts are, that in 1863 the mill company let to the defendant Morrison for a term of years a mill site abutting on the canal, with the right to draw from the canal a specified quantity of water, and the right to pass over the canal...