Kansas City journal. [volume] (Kansas City, Mo.) 1897-1928, 1897-12-24
FIFTY-SEVEN SUITS FILED IN THE
CIRCUIT COURT YESTERDAY.
TOTAL SUM ASKED, S153,65O.72
TWELVE PEOPLE HURT IN ACCI-
DENTS ASK A BIG AMOUNT.
Woman Whose ThiShbone Was BroL-
en- Wants $25 .OGO-DiTcrcnce in
Value Placed On Injured
LimbS-Suit for SLAM
derOus Words.

The harvest time of lawyers is near at
hand. The crop will be sowed by 5 o'clock
o-night and the cultivation will begin as
soon as court takes up in January. The
fees will b. harvested later on-maybe.
This is the last day on which suits to be
tried at the coming term of court can be
Iiled-it is called the last day of service.
All day yesterday law clerks hustled in and
out of the circuit clerks Office and Dave
McClanahan. the register clerk, was kept
busy as a hen with one chicken. 1t was q
merry scramble of litigants. Many tales
of sorrow. many accounts of sin were told
in the lucid, but never lurid, language of
the law.
1t has been a long time since there was
such a formidable array of parties of the
first part" as appeared in the circuit clerks
Office yesterday-such n lining up of the
broken-boned victims of accidents, such a
miscellaneous assortment of creditors de-
manding their due, with here and there a
sorrow-touched soul-usually a woman
eager to sever the nuptial knot that chafes.
Fifty-seyen suits were filed yesterday. a
great number of which called for money
for injuries received through negligence
so it is alleged-of others. Twelve people
who We're hurt. some on the cable cars,
others on the sidewalks, some in mills and
some on bridges. demand in the aggregate
sos. $50. Broken contracts. slanderous words
and suits of like nature are represented by
nine litigants whose total demand is for
s24. 500. 70. The aggregate sum asked for dur
ing the day is s153.650.72
The value placed upon arms and legs by
different people is well illustrated in the
suits filed in the circuit court. One man
loses a hand and estimates its value to him
at 81, 500; another man breaks an arm and
thinks he is damaged one-half as much as
the man who lost his hand. A man loses his
leg under a railroad train and sues Tor
ST.. 900: Il woman falls twenty feet and
breaks a leg and sues for $4,000. A man
bruises his spine and seeks 5000; a woman
breaks her thigh bone and asks $25!Uto. Inc
defective sidewalks. as usual. come in for
their share of the suits. 1t has been said
of Saul that he slew his thousands. but the
defective sidewalks of Kansas City have
MANNED their hundreds of thou. One wom-
an falls off a cable car and escapes with
out serious injury, but sues FOR 5000; an
other woman falls on a defective walk and
is injured about the same as the other
woman, but estimates her damages at
5000. One man thinks it worth Sl,S19 to be
put off a train.
w. w. OSDOrne ana w. A. tllIdl were
having a house constructed at Fourteenth
n Harrison streets under the direction
of Frank Frauns, a contractor. Fred ID.
fold %forty-five feet above the earth work
ing on the building or the afternoon OF
July IA when the ropes that held the SCAT
fold suddenly snapped and he was precipi-
tated to the ground. Both angles were
fractured by the fall. his back was
wrenched and his spine injured. He places
his damages at $50. 900 and makes Osborne.
Pitrat and Frauns the defendants.
James r. Rhea, a car inspector, of 1909
Woodland avenue. was working along II
string of box cars in the Union Pacific
yards on the afternoon of December Il
when a freight car was Shunted down the
tracks. In the parlance of a railroader
shunting is to impart a sudden impetus
to a car by striking it with a switch en-
giEe. A correlative form for shunting is
kicking" The ~"shunted" car hit the one
under which Rhea was WORKING and the
He says the accident was caused by the
oarelessness of the railroad company's EN-
ployes and he asks damages of the COM
pany in the sum of SIS 900.
The Alliance Trust Company owns a fla.
house at 513 Harrison street and Kathleen
Mckinley occupied the front parlor on
June "a last. A flight of steps leads from
the rear of the house to the ground. :.
distance of twenty feet. Kathleen leaned
or the railing one afternoon while the
woman who occupied the last room at the
end of the hall on the left passed down the
steps. The railing was old and worn and
crumbled beneath the burden of her weight
and she fell to the ground. Her right leg