Macdonald v. Adamian Et Al‪.‬

RUGG, Chief Justice. This is an action of tort to recover compensation for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff, while travelling on the sidewalk in front of land with buildings thereon owned by the defendants intestate, located at No. 142 Fulton street at the corner of Valley street in Medford, by slipping upon ice formed from water gathered upon his land and negligently discharged * * * upon said sidewalk through an artificial channel upon the property of the defendants intestate. The substance of the evidence in the record is this: The plaintiff testified that he walked up Valley street at about five oclock on a December morning on his way to work, and when in front of the premises of the defendants intestate fell at a point about nineteen feet from Valley street, three feet from the building, and eighteen inches from the steps of the store occupied by one Donovan. The garage is next door to the Donovan store and in the same building on land of the defendants intestate. The plaintiff was on his way to get a morning paper; the store was not open for business on that morning or any other morning at that hour; it was still dark; he was never authorized by Donovan, the occupant of the store, to take any paper; the papers were delivered in a bundle tied by rope and left on the steps of the store; it had been the plaintiffs custom for six or seven years to pull a paper from this bundle and to deposit two cents for it in a letter slot in the door of the store, and the money fell into a box attached to the inside of the door. It was raining and sleeting; the ice at the entrance of the store where he fell was bulky and higher than the rest of the ice around that section; the ground was covered with ice; it was slippery all around; the gutter on the building had a hole in it; he knew before the accident that there were no conductor pipes coming from the gutter. One Jannini testified that he was lessee of a garage in the building of the defendants intestate at the time of the accident to the plaintiff; that the water dripped down the side of the building from the roof to the ground through holes in the gutter, in back of the gutter and between the ends where two sections of the gutter met; that it had snowed the day previous to the accident of the plaintiff; that the snow was not plowed or shoveled; that there was a sort of pool and depression with ice which was above the rest; that there was an accumulation of ice four or five inches high along the side of the building, diminishing in size as it extended out for two or three feet and sloped to the same level as the rest of the ice. It was admitted that the defendants intestate was the owner of the premises containing the garage and store leased to Jannini and Donovan respectively, and received due notice of the time, place and cause of the injury.