Oxford v. Leathe

Citation43 N.E. 92,165 Mass. 254
PartiesOXFORD v. LEATHE.
Decision Date26 February 1896
CourtUnited States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

165 Mass. 254
43 N.E. 92

OXFORD
v.
LEATHE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

Feb. 26, 1896.


Exceptions from superior court, Middlesex county.

Action by one Oxford against one Leathe. There was a verdict for plaintiff, and defendant excepts. Overruled.


John [165 Mass. 254]D. Long and Thomas Savage, for plaintiff.

J.W. Johnson and H.N. Rice, for defendant.


HOLMES, J.

This is an action against the owner of a building for personal injuries caused by the giving way of a platform upon which the plaintiff was standing. Some days before the accident, the defendant had made a written agreement that he had “leased the Woburn Rink and seats now therein for four nights, August 2, 3, 4, and 5, 1893, building to be lighted,” to one Gleason, all money in the box office to be under the defendant's control until $20 was paid, each night. Gleason's understood purpose was to give exhibitions of horse training. On the evening of August 9th, Gleason was holding over on the foregoing terms by an oral understanding. An entertainment was to take place. The plaintiff, with others, had ascended a flight of stairs to the above-mentioned platform, and was waiting upon it, in front of the entrance, for the doors to open, when it fell.

[43 N.E. 93]

[165 Mass. 255]It is not necessary to consider whether the agreement was a lease or a license, although we regard it as a license. Johnson v. Wilkinson, 139 Mass. 3, 29 N.E. 62; Taylor v. Caldwell, 3 Best & S. 826, 832. Whatever it was, the defendant must be taken, or at least might have been found, to have contemplated the use of the stairs and platform, as they were, by the public, for the purpose of going to the show. If the jury found that the use actually made of the platform was something which the defendant was bound to have contemplated, he was liable for any neglect of proper precautions to make it safe, whether Gleason, also, was to blame or not, just as in the case of premises let with a nuisance upon them. Dalay v. Savage, 145 Mass. 38, 41, 12 N.E. 841;Clifford v. Cotton Mills, 146 Mass. 47, 49, 15 N.E. 84;Finnegan v. Gas Works Co., 159 Mass. 311,34 N.E. 526;Edwards v. Railroad Co., 98 N.Y. 245, 249, 253; Carson v. Godley, 26 Pa.St. 111; Joyce v. Martin, 15 R.I. 558, 562, 10 Atl. 620;Albert v. State, 66 Md. 325, 338, 7 Atl. 697; Foulkes v. Railway Co., 5 C.P.Div. 157, 159; Id., 4 C.P.Div. 267. We do not intend at all to enlarge the liability of landlords in cases where, heretofore, it has been decided that only the...

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