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11 cases

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Syllabus

Negligence — Municipalities—Highways—Defective sidewalk. A municipality is bound to keep its highways in fairly safe travelable condition, and travelers are entitled to presume that it will do so. Where the traveler has knowledge of a defect in the highway it does not follow as a legal consequence that he must under all circumstances avoid the use of it and reach his destination in some other way. It is a question of the character and imminency of the danger and the difficulty or inconvenience of avoiding it. If the danger was serious and imminent it might be the traveler’s duty as a matter of law to avoid it at any inconvenience; if however, the danger was trifling and the inconvenience of taking another way was so great that an ordinarily prudent man would not subject himself to it, it would not be negligence not to do so. Between these extremes are the countless gradations of danger and ways of avoiding it, depending on the circumstances. This class of cases must necessarily go to the jury. In an action against a borough by a woman, to recover damages for personal injuries by a fall on a defective sidewalk, the case is for the jury where the evidence tends to show that at the place of the accident there was a depression or hole in the sidewalk, the depth of which was variously estimated at from four to eight inches; that this depression had been there for several months; that the plaintiff although living in the vicinity had only passed the place three times within a year, and had no knowledge of the condition of the pavement; and that the accident happened at night while the plaintiff was walking side by side with a companion.