Barrett v. City of Sacramento

PULLEN, P. J.

This is an appeal by the City of Sacramento from a judgment against it for $4,000 in favor of plaintiff Mary Barrett, awarded by a jury as damages for personal injuries sustained by her in a fall upon a sidewalk within its boundaries.

The question is based upon the Act of 1923, subdivision

2

(Stats. 1923, p. 675), which provides:

“Counties, municipalities and school districts shall be liable for injuries to persons and property resulting from the dangerous or defective condition of public streets, highways, buildings, grounds, works and property in all cases where the governing or managing board of such county, municipality, school district, or other board, officer or person having authority to remedy such condition, had knowledge or notice of the defective or dangerous condition of any such street, railway, building, grounds, works or property and failed or neglected, for a reasonable time after acquiring such knowledge or receiving such notice, to remedy such condition or failed and neglected for a reasonable time after acquiring such knowledge or receiving such notice to take such action as may be reasonably necessary to protect the public against such dangerous or defective condition.”

The evidence before the jury showed the defect complained of was a broken area in a cement sidewalk near the center thereof, irregular in outline, approximately twelve inches across and about three-eighths of an inch deep, and that the sidewalk had existed in that condition for over five years, during which time city employees had, on various occasions, been working in that vicinity.

Appellant attacks the judgment from various angles, but the greater emphasis is laid upon the contention that the break was “a mere trifling irregularity in the surface of the sidewalk” and not therefore such a dangerous or defective condition as comes within the purview of the statute and

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that damages from an irregularity so slight could not reasonably be anticipated by the city, and hence its existence showed neither an unsafe condition within the meaning of the statute, would not constitute notice of an unsafe condition, nor a want of ordinary care because of its existence.