Riccitelli v. Sternfeld

• Decision Date: 24 September 1953
• Docket Number: No. 32783,32783
• Citation: 1 Ill.2d 133,115 N.E.2d 288
• Parties: RICCITELLI v. STERNFELD et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 288

115 N.E.2d 288

1 Ill.2d 133

RICCITELLI v. STERNFELD et al.

No. 32783.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Sept. 24, 1953.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 16, 1953.

Joseph D. Ryan, Louis G. Davidson, Benjamin Bass, and Louis P. Miller, Chicago, for appellant.

Crowe & Abrahamson, Chicago, for appellees.

FULTON, Justice.

This is an appeal from the Appellate Court, First District, 349 Ill.App. 63, 109 N.E.2d 921, which reversed a jury verdict and judgment in the superior court of Cook County in the amount of $7500 in favor of the appellant, Emily Riccitelli, for personal injuries suffered when she slipped and fell on the sidewalk bordering the filling station owned by the appellees Sternfeld and leased from them by the appellee Resnick.

The accident in question occurred on the sidewalk bordering the gas-and-oil filling station at the southeast corner of Sacramento and Harrison Streets in the city of Chicago on January 9, 1948. The appellant, while walking with her daughter, slipped and fell on a piece of ice or snow which was the result of extremely heavy snowfalls occurring during that period of time in that year. While the pictures offered in evidence by both parties do not portrary the locale at the time of the accident, they do show the site to be a typical metropolitan corner with sidewalks in immediate juxtaposition with the streets.

The facts are not substantially in dispute. There had been heavy snowfalls on January 1 with a subsequent fall on January 4. From the fourth to the ninth there were alternate periods of freezing and thawing. It appears that after the snowfalls on the first and the fourth the city sent its snow plows along the streets banking the snow up over the curbings on the side. The defendant Resnick and his employees dug out the driveways of the gas station and then shoveled a path through the snow on the walks, banking the snow on each side of the walk with resulting piles of snow on each side of the path to a heighth of two to three feet. Snow shoveled from the driveways was also added to these banks of snow at the mounths of the driveways. The appellant, walking along the path so shoveled, slipped and fell and suffered injuries to her ankle, the extent of which is not in dispute.

The theories of the parties involve a consideration of the law as applied to the particular circumstances surrounding the scene of the accident. It is the position of the appellant that the shoveling of snow from the driveways onto the piles of snow created by shoveling the walks produced an extra hazard whereby the defendants became responsible for any injuries resulting from ice or snow formed by the alternate freezing and thawing or from falling from the tops of the piles on the sidewalks. The position of the defendants is that no obstruction was created by the shoveling of the snow; that the defendants shoveled and cleared the walks and piled no snow thereon and, therefore, under the theory of Cronin v. Brownlier, 348 Ill.App. 448, 109 N.E.2d 352, could not be guilty of negligence because they were performing only a mere gratuity and had no duty towards the plaintiff.

From the testimony it appears that the street and the sidewalks had been cleared of snow. Due to the heavy snowfalls there was more than the usual amount of snow and it accumulated as it was cleared. The condition of the area as viewed in the photographs offered in evidence indicates that in this municipal corner there were no parkings on which the snow could be shoveled. As a result the snow was banked on both sides of a path which the defendants shoveled for pedestrian use. The plaintiff stated that although there were piles of snow on both sides of the walk there was a path of several feet in the middle of the walk where the walk was clear and...