Realty & Mortgage Co. v. Ulrich

Sloan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal is from a judgment in favor of the plaintiff (appellee) for injuries sustained by her from slipping on the ice in front of the defendant’s (appellant’s) property Bos. 507 and 509 on the east side of Wolfe Street (south) in Baltimore. According to her evidence, the plaintiff was walking south on Wolfe Street, about 6.50 in the morning, on her way to work. The accident happened on Tuesday, January 28th,. 1930.

On the north side of the defendants’ building a down spout, to' carry water from the roof, was placed in the Eall of 1929. It was so located that it drained into a pipe, over which was a grating, by which the water from the roof was intended to be carried to a city sewer. The place at which the plaintiff fell was on a driveway which passed across the sidewalk; to fifteen garages in the rear of the lot, and the spout was on the alley side of the building. The charge of negligence in the declaration was that over a period of three days ice had accumulated on the sidewalk, “caused in part by the freezing of melting snow and rain dripping from a rain spout which emptied on to the property of the defendants, and flowed over the pavement aforesaid, and by reason of the negligence and careless use and management by them of their ⁶⁶⁸ premises abutting on tbe said sidewalk, in that they failed to divert the flow of the melting snow and rain aforesaid,” thereby causing “the icy formation complained of.” The plaintiff testified that the pavement “was covered with snow that morning”; “it was just a light snow.” Asked, “What was the condition of the spot where you fell, slipped ?” she said, “I noticed it was covered with ice and the snow was on top, and where I did fall was that hole that was filled up with ice.” Asked to “describe the spout,” she said. “Well, the spout, I taken notice, there wasn’t any way for the water to* go down.

They had a spout and the water comes right over the driveway.” This answer was repeated twice to questions by the court. In response to a question by the court, “How, where was this ice?” she said, “The ice was all over the whole driveway, from the end of the front of the house down to what is supposed to be the gutter.” The driveway and sidewalk were “one continuous surface”; there was no curbing across the sidewalk bounding the “driveway”. On cross-examinaition the plaintiff said she had noticed that rain spout ever since she had been going down that way. She looked over and concluded that the water iad come from the rain spout, although there was no water running from it at that time.

Asked why it was she had •occasion to notice the rain spout so often, she said: “Well, because all during the winter months even if it didn’t snow •or freeze, any water coming out of that rain spoilt, always laid there and would freeze there and get one cake of ice .along there.” She testified that she knew it had been raining about five o’clock the day before, not hard, followed by a ■snow, and it was cold. Minnie Schell, a fellow worker, who was with the plaintiff at the time, said it was raining when they went home from work, “kind of warm when it was raining.” During the night it snowed. She had noticed the spout on the building of 509 South Wolfe Street. She “had seen water from there gush out over the pavement and flow down the walkway.” ⁶⁶⁹ Frederick Roettger, a foreman of the factory where the plaintiff worked, and who was walking behind Misses Ulrich and Schell on the way to work, said, “There was ice on the pavement the previous day.” He ascribed the fall to holes in the sidewalk caused by bricks being out.

Asked whether “the ice that Miss Ulrich said she