Townsend v. City of Boston

• Decision Date: 05 March 1919
• Citation: 232 Mass. 451
• Parties: KATE S. TOWNSEND v. CITY OF BOSTON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

232 Mass. 451

KATE S. TOWNSEND v. CITY OF BOSTON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

March 5, 1919

March 8 1919. Present: RUGG, C.

J., DE COURCY CROSBY, PIERCE, & CARROLL, JJ.

Way, Public defect. Snow and Ice. Notice.

In an action against a city under R.L.c. 51, Sections 20, 21, for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff upon a public way of the defendant which was defective in part by reason of ice, it appeared that notice of the time, place and cause of the injury first was given nineteen days after the accident, and the plaintiff contended that "by reason of physical or mental incapacity" it was impossible for the plaintiff to give the notice within the time required. It appeared that after the plaintiff's accident she was treated at a hospital for five weeks and could not sit up, that she was suffering a good deal from shock and that for two weeks she was kept under opiates a great deal in order to relieve pain that she lived with her brother and sister, whom she told of the accident immediately after its occurrence, mentioning the time and place, and that her sister and "plenty of people" came to see her at the hospital. Held, that there was no evidence warranting a finding that it was impossible for her by reason of physical or mental incapacity to give notice of the accident within the ten days required by the statute and that a verdict properly was ordered for the defendant.

TORT against the city of Boston under R.L.c. 51, Sections 20, 21, for personal injuries sustained on March 7, 1914, when the plaintiff was walking on the sidewalk on Boylston Street, a public highway in Boston, by reason of an alleged defect in the condition of the sidewalk consisting in part of ice thereon. Writ dated March 6, 1916.

In the Superior Court the case was tried before Quinn, J. It appeared that the accident happened at about eight o'clock on the morning of March 7, 1914, and that on March 26, 1914, a notice in writing of the time, place and cause of the injury was served upon the defendant. At the close of the plaintiff's evidence, which is described in the opinion upon motion of the defendant the judge ordered a verdict for the defendant on the ground that the notice to the defendant of the time, place and cause of the injury had not been given seasonably. The plaintiff alleged exceptions.

R.L.c. 51, Section 21, contains the following provisions: "Such notice shall be in writing, signed by the person injured or by some one in his behalf. . . . If by reason of physical or mental incapacity it is impossible for the person...