Case ID: ga_94/html/0483-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The City of Columbus v. Sims.
    1. A city which is under no statutory obligation to light its streets, is not, as matter of law, bound when lighting them voluntarily to do it in such a manner as to enable persons using them to see any obstruction that the city may have placed in the street, irrespective of whether the obstruction, such as a water-plug, was a reasonable and proper one, or not.
    
      2. Taking the whole charge of the court together, it was free from substantial error save in that part of it which related to lighting the streets. Judgment reversed.
    
    April 9, 1894.
    Argued at the last term.
    Action for damages. Before Judge Butt. Muscogee superior court. May term, 1893.
    Worrill & Little, for plaintiff in error.
    McNeill & Levy, contra.
    
   Sims sued the city for injuries sustained by him by driving his buggy at night against a water-plug or hydrant in one of the streets. He claimed that the city had caused this plug to be placed in the roadway used for vehicles (the usual place for locating such plugs being in the center of the streets), and that there were no lights at or near the place and nothing to give warning of the location of the plug, he being ignorant of the same. He obtained-a verdict, and defendant’s motion for a new trial was overruled. The material ground of the motion is, that the court erred in charging the jury thus: “The city having undertaken to light its streets, it was their duty, after they undertook to light that street, to have lighted the street in such a manner as parties could see any obstruction in the street.”