Best v. City of St. Joseph
Best v. City of St. Joseph
Opinion of the Court
Plaintiff sued the city of St. Joseph for injuries received from a fall upon a sidewalk in said city. Her petition charged that at the point in question rough, knotty, uneven and slippery ridges of ice had formed and remained for a long time prior to the accident and had rendered the sidewalk dangerous and unsafe.
There was evidence tending to fully support every issue raised by the petition, and the jury found a verdict for her in the sum of $1000.
Plaintiff’s evidence also showed that the walk itself was rough and uneven having been constructed of blocks of cement laid loosely upon the ground with large and irregular cracks between them. It is defendant’s contention that it was the defectively constructed sidewalk that caused the injury and not the accumulation of snow and ice in ridges or hummocks; and that the petition having charged one specification of negligence, plaintiff ought not to be allowed to recover upon another and different ground.
There is no doubt that a plaintiff should not be allowed to recover for an act of negligence not included in the petition. But in our opinion this was not done in this case. Plaintiff did not plead one ground and recover upon another. She charged that the sidewalk was rendered dangerous and unsafe by reason of the ice forming in lumps and ridges and the proof showed, or tended to show, that such was the case and that it had remained thus for a sufficient length of time to have enabled the city to know of it in the exercise of ordinary care. Her instructions to the jury predicated her right to recover solely upon the finding of such facts by the jury.
It was not necessary for plaintiff’s instruction No. 1 (complained of by defendant) to embrace the defense that the defective condition of the sidewalk itself, and not the snow and ice, caused the injury because the instruction by its very terms necessarily included it.
The court did not err in refusing defendant’s instruction-lettered “A” since it was fully covered by defendant’s given instructions numbered 5 and 9.
It is true there is no witness who testifies affirmatively that the point in question on Charles street was in the city of St. Joseph, Missouri. And while we cannot consider the alleged admission of the attorneys in the opening statement that the place was inside the city, (since the opening statement was not preserved in the record), yet it is plainly apparent from the questions and answers, the instructions asked by and given for both sides, and from the manner in which the case was tried, that the fact that the walk was in
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.