Mayronne v. Keegan

Citations

• 117 La. 661
• 42 So. 212
• 1906 La. LEXIS 748

Syllabus

<p>1. Municipal Corporations — Obstructions in Street — Liability op Person Causing Obstruction.</p> <p>• Where a boy 10 years of age was walking at night on a public levee, and was frightened by dogs, and thereupon ran down into a street and came into violent contact with certain pieces of machinery negligently left in the public thoroughfare by the employes of the defendant. and was thereby seriously injured, the defendant will be held responsible in damages.</p> <p>[Ed. Note. — For cases in point, see Cent. Dig. vol. 36, Municipal Corporations, § 1688.]</p> <p>2. Same — Proximate Cause.</p> <p>In such cases the unlawful obstruction of the street is the proximate cause of the injury, and it is no excuse that defendant did not anticipate that any person would approach the street from the levee or would be frightened therefrom by the pursuit of dogs.</p> <p>[Ed. Note. — For cases in point, see Cent. Dig. vol. 36, Municipal Corporations, §§ 1667, 1670.]</p> <p>On Rehearing.</p> <p>3. Same.</p> <p>The town of Gretna, on the east bank of the Mississippi river opposite New Orleans, is unincorporated, and therefore, like the rest of the territory of Jefferson Parish, is under the government of the police jury of that parish. That body and the so-called trustees of the town joined in leasing to private individuals the open space, or common, along the front of the town, between the front street and the public levee which is along the river bank. For years the lessees occupied this space. They used as a landing, and left open for that purpose, a part of it that would have been occupied by one of the streets perpendicular to the levee if said street bad been continued to the levee; and pedestrians going to or from the levee, on top of which was a footpath, would traverse said open space by two well beaten paths, one diagonally across, and one straight across. The part of the leased premises thus left open bv the lessees, and used by them as a landing, hacina width between Fr