The City of Pittsburg v. Broderson
| Decision Date | 25 July 1900 |
| Docket Number | 500 |
| Citation | 10 Kan.App. 430,62 P. 5 |
| Parties | THE CITY OF PITTSBURG v. JULIANNA BRODERSON |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
Decided July, 1900.
Error from Crawford district court; W. L. SIMONS, judge.
Judgment of district court affirmed.
1. CITIES -- Defective Sidewalks -- Evidence. The evidence considered, and held sufficient to identify the sidewalk, mentioned in the report of the committee of the city council on streets and alleys, as the sidewalk upon which plaintiff claimed to have been injured.
2. -- Knowledge of Committee on Streets and Alleys. Knowledge on the part of the members of the committee of the city council on streets and alleys of the defective and dangerous condition of a public sidewalk in such city is sufficient to charge the city with negligence.
3. -- Evidence -- Immaterial Error. The evidence claimed by plaintiff in error to have been improperly admitted examined. Held, that its admission did not constitute such error as to require a reversal of the case.
4. -- Fair Trial -- Immaterial Error. Where the record shows an unusually fair trial, the instructions of the court the special findings and general verdict of the jury being free from any appearance of passion or prejudice, and substantial justice appears to have been done, errors, to require a reversal, must be very grave and material ones. (Railroad Co. v. Sadler, 38 Kan. 128, 16 P. 46.)
W. J. Gregg, for plaintiff in error.
Brayman & Hill, for defendant in error.
Defendant in error brought this action against the city of Pittsburg to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by her because of the defective and dangerous condition of a sidewalk in said city. The case was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict for plaintiff. Judgment was rendered upon the verdict and the city brings the case here.
The first error complained of by plaintiff in error is the admission in evidence, by the trial court, of the report of the streets and alleys committee of the city council, to show the condition of the sidewalk where plaintiff claimed to have been injured, and to show that the city had actual notice of the condition thereof.
The ground of plaintiff's objection to this evidence appears to be that the sidewalk mentioned in the report was not identified as being the sidewalk upon which plaintiff claimed to have been injured. The report, so far as material to this case, is as follows:
In her petition, plaintiff alleged that the injury was sustained on the south side of Third street, between Broadway and Locust streets, in the city of Pittsburg, Kan.
L. E. Merithew, who was city clerk at the time the accident occurred, testified that the two lots described in the report were on the north side of block 34; that one lot faced Locust street and one faced Broadway; that the lots lay east and west and extended entirely across the block from Broadway to Locust, and that they were the only lots on the north side of block 34 that joined Third street.
If the lots were on the north side of the block, and one faced Broadway and one faced Locust Street -- the two together extending entirely across the block -- it is clear that the only point at which they could join Third street would be on their north side; and if they joined Third street on their north side, it follows that they must have been on the south side of the street. The allegation of the petition was that the sidewalk was on the south side of Third street between Broadway and Locust; the report locates the sidewalk on the north side of lots 236 and 205, of block 34, and the evidence of Merithew clearly shows that these lots lay on the south side of Third street between Broadway and Locust streets. We think that it clearly appears from the evidence that the sidewalk described in the report was identical with the one described in the...
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