Court Opinion

ID: 9755951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:00:56.293558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:13.280457
License: Public Domain

*95Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
On Sunday, December 19, 1948, snow fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
The snow brought with it the natural corollaries of white blanketed streets, glazed surfaces, and the usual wintry hampering of movement, both pedestrian and vehicular, on the thoroughfares of the city. The six inch fall, however, while impeding traffic to a degree, did not immobilize it, and automobiles ploughed through the accumulation of flakes, leaving treads and tracks in their frothy wake.
On the night of December 24th, at about 11:20 o’clock, Mrs. Genevieve Solinsky, who lived on Eeno Lane, left her home to attend Christmas Eve mass, to be celebrated at the Holy Trinity Church located at the corner of South and South Meade Streets, several blocks away. After taking some 15 to 20 steps she slipped on a ridge of ice, fell and was injured. She and her husband brought suit against the City of Wilkes-Barre averring negligence in its maintenance of Beno Lane. At the termination of the plaintiff’s case in the trial before the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County, the Court entered a compulsory nonsuit which it refused later to take off. From that refusal an appeal was taken to this Court.
The crucial question before us is whether the admitted ridges and hills of ice on Beno Lane were there for a sufficient period of time to visit constructive notice on the municipality as to their existence and potential peril to man and vehicle utilizing the roadway, for Beno Lane had no sidewalk. To answer that question, there must naturally first be an understanding as to when the glacial impediment first made its appearance.
The learned court below in its opinion refusing to lift the nonsuit declared that the ruts of ice on which *96Mrs. Solinsky fell were caused by tbe cold weather of Thursday congealing the snow which melted because of a thaw on Wednesday. But this meteorological conclusion ignored the testimony of the plaintiff that from Sunday, December 19th to Friday, December 2áth, Reno Lane was never free of ice and snow. It also discarded the evidence that the moving traffic on Eeno Lane, aided by the sunlight of the day, had chopped, softened and churned the snow into little hills, valleys and other surface irregularities which, then, visited by the frost and freeze of the night, solidified into ridges and mounds of ice.
The lower court’s decision apparently also swept away without consideration the definitive testimony of the husband-plaintiff that already on Tuesday, December 21st, there was a hardness to the ruts and ridges caused by the tire marks in the snow, and the testimony of the witness William Danowski that the ruts and ridges he saw on Friday were of the same character as those which came to his attention on Tuesday afternoon.
Is the lower court’s evaluation and interpretation of the testimony so indisputably correct that reasonable minds cannot possibly differ as to its meaning and implications? If it is not, the case should have been submitted to the jury.
“A nonsuit may be entered only in a clear case. If there is doubt of the inferences that may be drawn from the oral evidence, it must be submitted to the jury. In passing on a motion to nonsuit and in reviewing the refusal to take off a nonsuit, the oral evidence must be regarded in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, who must receive the benefit of every fact the jury might reasonably infer in plaintiff’s favor from the evidence received or erroneously excluded: Metzgar v. Lycoming Twp., 39 Pa. Superior Ct. 602; *97Malone v. Marano, 326 Pa. 316, 192 A. 254; Stinson v. Smith, 329 Pa. 177, 196 A. 843.” Kimble v. Wilson, 352 Pa. 275, 42 A. 2d 526.
Applying the rule above mentioned, the jury in this case conld have found that the icy irregularity which tripped the wife-plaintiff formed soon after the snowfall of Sunday, December 19th, and, as a result of the low wintry temperature, remained practically intact (changing only in midday) up to the time the plaintiff fell on the night of Friday, December 24th.
Assuming that the jury so found, could it then also have concluded that this five day interval constituted sufficient notice to the City of Wilkes-Barre of the icebound dangers on Reno Lane?
In Reed v. Schuylkill Haven, 22 Pa. Superior Ct. 27, the evidence warranted a conclusion that the condition which caused the plaintiff to fall endured from three days to a week. The Superior Court there said:
“The length of time, during which the icy condition of the crossing which caused the accident to the plaintiff continued, was of itself such evidence of constructive notice to the municipal authorities as would carry the case to the jury: Dean v. City of New Castle, 201 Pa. 51.”
In Dean v. City of New Castle, 201 Pa. 51, 50 A. 310, the evidence indicated that the municipality had had actual notice of the circumstances involved for two or three days. This Court held that the issue involved was properly submitted to the jury because the evidence “tended to show that the ridge of ice had existed on the sidewalk for sufficient time to imply notice to the city, even if there was not notice in fact.”
In Llewellyn v. Wilkes-Barre, 254 Pa. 196, 98 A. 886, the trial court left to the jury the question *98as to whether the open appearance of a certain ridge of ice for five days provided adequate constructive notice to the city, and this Court affirmed the judgment entered upon the verdict for the plaintiff.
The fact that there may have been intermittent thawing and freezing, changing the formation of the ruts and ridges from day to day, would not relieve the municipality from liability even if it be assumed that the plaintiff failed to prove when the particular mound of ice upon which she fell came into being. It was sufficient that the city had constructive notice of the general dangerous condition on Reno Lane.
The Supreme Court of Iowa, studying the problem here posed, in its case of Parks v. City of Des Moines, 195 Iowa 972, 191 N.W. 728, resolved the issue in a well-expressed opinion, which said, inter alia: “But the evidence shows that, from a time soon after the snow fell, for substantially four days, because of the travel and tramping over the snow, and the thawing and freezing, it had become packed and icy, and was rough, rounded, uneven, and in a condition substantially different from the way the snow fell naturally. A jury could have found from the evidence that during this entire time such was the condition, though it may have changed somewhat from day to day. They could have found that such was the condition at the time plaintiff fell. The evidence is by no means conclusive that the condition of the walk which resulted in plaintiffs fall was caused by a thaw within a day or two prior thereto which materially changed the rough and dangerous condition, which, as said, had existed for at least four days. At least, the question was for the jury.”
In support of its position of non-liability, the defendant here leans heavily on the decision in the case *99of Beebe et al. v. Philadelphia, 312 Pa. 214, but that case melts, under tbe sunlight of analysis, to the point of complete inapplicability to the facts before us here. There the assumed constructive notice ran from 3 o’clock of a Monday afternoon to 6 o’clock of the Tuesday afternoon immediately following. The accident happened in the large metropolis of Philadelphia with its interminable stretches of sidewalks so that, as the Court indicated: “It could not be reasonably said that the city would have violated its duty to inspect its 4,000 miles of sidewalk, and where the snow had not been cleared away from them, to cause its removal between three o’clock Monday afternoon and six o’clock on Tuesday evening when the plaintiff fell. Such a lapse of time is not sufficient to visit the city with constructive notice of the alleged defective condition of the pavement: Swan v. Indiana Boro., 242 Pa. 596.”
While size of the municipality does not change the principle involved, it is not unreasonable to conclude that in a city of less territorial extent and smaller population, five days’ persistence of a danger is sufficient time within which to put the authorities of the city on constructive notice that an accident can happen at the site of a dangerous condition.
The defendant-appellee argues that the plaintiff should not recover in any event because she was guilty of contributory negligence. This again would be a question of fact for the jury. It cannot be said as a matter of law that Mrs. Solinsky was negligent because she went out at night to attend church services and that she traversed a dangerous lane when no less dangerous route was indicated. There is no evidence that she did not proceed with caution in the circumstances. The street was poorly lighted and there was no obligation on her part to remain at home on Christmas Eve, (thus failing in her religious obligations), *100just because the City had failed in its duty to maintain its streets properly.
In Keiser v. Philadelphia, Transportation Co., 356 Pa. 366, 51 A. 2d 715, this Court said: “Plaintiff did not ignore a known dangerous condition. She attempted to walk cautiously over the crosswalk as she had done on many days previous to the accident when substantially the same icy condition prevailed. An alternate safer route was not shown to exist. The testimony showed that the other available routes were at least as dangerous. It was for the jury to determine whether or not plaintiff exercised proper care in passing over the crosswalk at this intersection, notwithstanding its icy condition. She was not obliged to remain at home merely because the city failed to keep open its sewer and remove an obstruction from its streets, on the pain that if she ventured upon the sidewalks or streets and was injured through the negligence of the municipality she cannot recover: Evans v. Philadelphia, 205 Pa. 193, 54 A. 775.”
The matters of defendant’s negligence and plaintiff’s contributory negligence being questions of fact for the jury to determine, I would take off the non-suit.