Lorraine v. City of Los Angeles

YORK, P. J.

This is an appeal by the city of Dos Angeles from a judgment recovered by plaintiff Cecille Lorraine on account of personal injuries sustained by her when she fell on a broken sidewalk. Said Cecille Lorraine died during the pendency of this appeal, and Ben H. Brown, as Administrator of her estate, was substituted in her place as party respondent.

The evidence adduced at the trial of said action reveals that on October 15, 1937, around 4:30 p. m., Cecille Lorraine alighted from a street car at the terminus of a car line on Vine Street about a quarter of a block north of Hollywood Boulevard in the city of Los Angeles. She crossed Vine Street and stepped up onto the sidewalk at a point 10 or 12 feet north of the intersection of Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard, took a few steps, probably a distance of three feet, and (as she testified) “then my foot must have caught in something, and I took a double-header which threw me with great force onto the pavement. . . . The only thing I felt, I was caught. I felt my foot was caught.” As a result of the fall said Cecille Lorraine sustained a fracture of the proximal extremity of the humerus and other painful injuries.

The witness Barrere testified that he observed the condition of the sidewalk at the point in question practically every day during the month of October, 1937, and took particular note of it on October 16th; that he observed there was a culvert (storm drain catch basin) the top of which formed part of the sidewalk and that close to one corner of the catch basin cover the sidewalk was broken away, forming a hole over 12 inches long, well over 2 inches deep and that “I could put my whole shoe inside the hole. ’ ’ Said witness described the location as being 12 to 15 feet from the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and about 3 feet east of the easterly curb line of Vine Street, such condition being shown in a

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photograph admitted in evidence as Plaintiff’s Exhibit 3. He also stated that he had observed for about a month or six weeks prior to the accident that the sidewalk was in much the same condition as it was on the day on which he took particular note of it.

The witness Cook, a right-of-way solicitor for Southern California Edison Company, testified that at the request of the attorney who filed Mrs. Lorraine’s claim with the city of Los Angeles, he measured the hole in question on October 16, 1937, noted such measurements upon a tracing which he made at that time, which was introduced in evidence as Plaintiff ’s Exhibit 4, and attempted unsuccessfully to make a plaster cast of the hole. He stated that the hole was twelve feet west from a point ten feet north of the southwest corner of the California Bank Building located at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine; that the hole was ragged, 18 inches long, “about 7 inches in width at the widest point,” and varied in depth from one-quarter inch to three inches.