Hoch v. Butler Township

Citations

• 232 Pa. 454
• 81 A. 546
• 1911 Pa. LEXIS 742

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Municipal corporations — Highways—Notice—Evidence— Circumstantial proof.</p> <p>In an action against a township to recover damages for injuries received by plaintiff through falling from a heavily loaded wagon on which he was riding down a steep grade on a rough mountain road, the case is for the jury where it appears that the road had been in very bad condition for months and the township supervisors had both constructive and actual knowledge of its defects; that the gutters at the side had become filled with earth and the surface water from rains had been diverted to the middle of the road where it had made small gullies and washed the earth from the stones in the roadbed; that a front wheel of plaintiff’s wagon struck the thin edge of a wedge-shaped stone, a foot in length and seven inches in width at its thicker end, and pushed it on the top of other large stones, raising the wheel eighteen or twenty inches; and that stones of like size were in the roadbed in the immediate vicinity, though there is no proof of the length of time the particular stones- which caused the accident had been in the road.</p>