Yaniger v. Calvert Bldg. & Const. Co., 16.

• Decision Date: 04 May 1944
• Docket Number: No. 16.,16.
• Parties: YANIGER v. CALVERT BLDG. & CONST. CO.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

37 A.2d 263

YANIGER
v.
CALVERT BLDG. & CONST. CO.

No. 16.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

May 4, 1944.

Appeal from Baltimore City Court; John T. Tucker, Judge.

Action by George Yaniger, an incompetent, by his committee, Fannye Yaniger, against the Calvert Building & Construction Company for personal injuries caused by a fall from a window in defendant's office building. From a judgment sustaining a demurrer to plaintiff's amended declaration, he appeals.

Affirmed.

Roszel C. Thomsen, of Baltimore (Paul L. Cordish, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

Jesse Slingluff, Jr., of Baltimore, for appellee.

Before MARBURY, C. J., and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, GRASON, MELVIN, and BAILEY, JJ.

MELVIN, Judge.

This is a suit for damages brought on behalf of the appellant because of the appellee's alleged negligence in failing to provide safeguards at a window in its office building through which the appellant fell and sustained severe injuries. A demurrer to the amended declaration was sustained, without leave to further amend, and it is from this ruling that the plaintiff has appealed.

The suit is based upon the following allegations of fact: The defendant on August 2, 1940, was the owner of the office building known as the ‘Equitable Building’ in Baltimore City and invited and permitted the general public to enter it to visit its tenants and for other purposes. On the afternoon of the day mentioned, which was a very hot day, the plaintiff entered this building by way of the bridge which connects the seventh floor of the Equitable Building with the Calvert Building to visit a tenant, and eventually came into the hallway on the seventh floor in order to take an elevator down to the ground floor. There are four elevator shafts, two on each side of the window hereinafter described, but only one pair of buttons or signals to stop the elevator, which buttons are located within a few inches of said window. The plaintiff pushed the ‘down’ button, but the elevator was long in coming. Immediately beside the button was a tall window, which opened to a height of five feet ten inches from the floor, the sill of which was only two feet two inches

37 A.2d 264

above the floor, just above the knee, and well below the center of gravity of a man of normal height, as the plaintiff is. The window was wide open, and this window, as well as the corresponding windows on each floor of the building, was customarily kept open by the defendant during the summer, but had no bar or other guard across it to prevent persons from falling out of it. No warning of the unusually low and dangerous window was posted or otherwise given. The plaintiff saw that the window was there, but his attention was not drawn to the height of the window sill from the floor because he was required to, and did, focus his attention on the location of the elevator buttons as he approached the elevators. After pressing the button, the plaintiff turned toward the window for a breath of air and as he did so he became dizzy and overcome by the heat and the exertion of walking about the streets, and fell toward the window. He fell out of said window on to a sheet metal air duct six or seven floors below, and was seriously and permanently injured. These injuries, the declaration further alleges, ‘were caused by the negligence of the defendant, its agents, servants and employees, in that it permitted a...