Sheats v. City Of Rome
| Decision Date | 18 July 1893 |
| Citation | 92 Ga. 535,17 S.E. 922 |
| Parties | SHEATS. v. CITY OF ROME. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Defective Sidewalk — Injuries to Traveler-Contributory Negligence.
Although it was gross negligence for the municipal authorities of a city, after causing a ditch five feet wide and three or four feet deep to be cut across a public sidewalk, to leave it open, in this condition, for several weeks, a female who was perfectly aware of the existence, width, and depth of the ditch, and who either attempted to jump across it, or stepped into the bottom of it on a rock, and tried to step out, and was thus injured, has no right of action against the city. It is clear that, by the exercise of ordinary care on her part, the injury might have been avoided.
(Syllabus by the Court.)
Error from city court of Floyd; W. T. Turnbull, Judge.
Action for personal injuries by Maud C. Sheats against the city of Rome. Defend-ant had judgment, and plaintiff brings error. Affirmed.
The following is the official report:
The petition of Maud Sheats against the city of Rome was dismissed on oral motion, made when the case came on for trial, upon the ground that it set forth no sufficient cause of action, to which decision petitioner excepted. The petition alleged: Petitioner occupied a dwelling on a road which runs through the fourth ward of Rome. The city authorities constructed a ditch on the side of her house, from a pond of water near by in rear of the house, running east of the house, crossing the sidewalk, and emptying itself in the road and a culvert under it. Before the ditch crossed the sidewalk, at a point between the house and the city, and was widened and deepened thereat by the city, pedestrians using the sidewalk passed safely over the ditch by means of a stone bridge, and petitioner had frequently done this. About three weeks prior to July 12, 1890, this bridge was removed from the sidewalk by defendant, and the ditch was left open and unprotected, without any means of crossing, except by jumping over it, by sliding into the ditch from one side, and climbing the bank on the other, or by leav-ing the sidewalk, and taking to the highway. The former mode was rendered more difficult and hazardous because defendant opened the ditch at said point wider, and slanted the top or edges on either side, and deepened it at the bottom, making it lower than the culvert under the road, its side ditches and the ditch extending back to the pond. Where the ditch crossed the sidewalk it was three or...
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Southern Ry. Co. v. Rowe
...the Supreme Court held that the petition set forth a cause of action because these allegations took it out of the rule declared in Sheats v. Rome, supra, and v. Atlanta, 94 Ga. 613, 19 S.E. 987, but reaffirmed the doctrine of those cases by saying that the plaintiff could not recover "if sh......
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Southland Butane Gas Co. v. Blackwell
...For some of the numerous cases holding to the same effect see Briscoe v. Southern Railway Co., 103 Ga. 224, 28 S.E. 638; Sheats v. City of Rome, 92 Ga. 535, 17 S.E. 922; Johns v. Georgia Railway & Electric Co., 133 Ga. 525, 66 S.E. 269; Moore v. Southern Railway Co., 136 Ga. 872, 875, 72 S.......
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Evans v. City of Atlanta
...negligence on the part of the plaintiff as to preclude him from recovering damages, and cites as controlling the cases of Sheats v. Rome, 92 Ga. 535, 17 S.E. 922, of Columbus v. Griggs, 113 Ga. 597, 38 S.E. 953, 84 Am.St.Rep. 257, and Kent v. Southern Bell Tel. Co., 120 Ga. 980, 48 S.E. 399......