Donohue v. Western Union Telegraph Co.

Citations

• 57 Pa. Super. 251
• 1914 Pa. Super. LEXIS 184

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Fall through trap — Telegraph company — Contributory negligence — Evidence.</p> <p>In an action against a telegraph company to recover damages for personal injuries sustained,by falling through an open trap in a hall, it appeared that defendant occupied for its telegraph offices a front room in a small building, access to which room from the street was by a hall running along the side of the room. The defendant’s employees’ only entrance to the front room where the telegraph appliances were, was by going through the hall to a door which opened into a back room. The hall could be lighted by opening a shutter. The public transacted its business with the company through a window .in the partition between the hall and the front room. Between this window and the door to the back room there was a trap in the floor of the hall leading to the cellar. The defendant had no control over the cellar nor the door to the trap. Plaintiff went to the defendant’s office about ten o’clock in the morning to deliver a telegraph message. She entered the hall, found the window closed, and not receiving any answer to her knock, but hearing the click of the instruments in the front room, she started along the hall to enter the back room in order to secure attention. As she did so she fell into the trap, the door of which had been left open by a plumber employed by the owner of the house, a few minutes before. Plaintiff was injured. Held, (1) there was no error in the refusal of the trial judge to instruct the jury that plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence (2) that there was no negligence on the part of the defendant, except that it had failed to open the shutter by which the hall could have been adequately lighted, and (3) that it was reversible error for the trial judge tb charge that the defendant was bound to supply a “safe” place instead of “a reasonably safe place” for the transaction of business by its patrons.</p>