Lee v. Maryland Telephone & Telegraph Co.

Schmucker, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant sued the appellees in the Circuit Court for Harford County for damages for injuries sustained by her through falling over a loose wire lying on a public street in the town of Belair. At the conclusion of the plaintiff’s evidence the Court granted a prayer offered by the defendant taking the case from the jury for want of any evidence legally sufficient to establish the defendant’s liability for the plaintiff’s injury. The only issue presented by this appeal is that of the propriety of the Court’s action in granting the prayer.

There is evidence in the record tending to prove that the plaintiff in the latter part of April, 1902, when starting to cross Broadway in Belair with the use of due care caught her foot in a wire, lying concealed in the grass but attached at one end to a pole, and that she was thereby thrown to the ground and injured. The question in the case is whether there is any evidence that would warrant a jury in finding that' the defendant corporations or either of them owned the wire or had such control over it at the time of the accident as to be responsible for negligence in the management or care of it. It is conceded that neither of the defendants owned the pole to which the wire was attached or had any poles at or near the locality of the accident. The pole was in fact shown by the evidence to be one of a system of electric light poles in which the defendants had no interest.

It was sought to hold them liable for negligence in permitting the wire to lie on the ground along the public road, upon the theory that they were the assignees or successors in title of the persons ⁶⁹⁴ who originally strung the wire, for the purpose of a former telephone connection, on the electric light poles with the consent of the owners of those poles. In the attempt to support that theory the plaintiff introduced evidence tending to show that four persons as co-partners started the telephone service in Belair in 1894; that in March, 1895, they admitted two or three other persons into the firm and that in September the firm became incorporated under the name of the Harford County Telephone Company. It was also testified that it was understood between the parties to this incorporation that the company became the owner of the electrical equipment and wires which had been owned by the individuals who composed it but there was no formal or written transfer of the' property from the individuals to the company. There was also evidence tending to show that the lines of the Harford County Telephone Company were operated by the Maryland Telephone Company at the time of the accident.

The plaintiff also offered evidence tending to prove that in 1894, while the telephone enterprise in Belair was still in the hands of its four originators a pair of wires were strung by them out Broadway passing by the place of the plaintiff’s accident, on the electric light poles in order to serve a telephone in Dr. Richardson’s residence and that those wires remained on the light poles after the telephone' had been removed. She further offered evidence tending to prove that in February, 1902, several months prior to the accident, a naked wire such as is used for telephone service fell down off the light poles on to the ground on Broadway at.or near the place of the accident, and that several persons had shortly prior to the accident encountered a loose wire of that kind lying there by the roadside. John H. Reckford, who was interested in the firm owning the light poles on Broadway and had been one of the promoters of arid for