Fletcher v. City of Aberdeen

Supreme Court of Washington · 1959 · Torts

negligenceblind personscustomreasonable caremunicipal negligencecontinuing dutyparking stripsidewalk safety

Facts

The city dug a ditch in the parking strip next to the sidewalk at Broadway and Fourth Streets to place electric wires underground. Barricades had originally been erected, but a city employee removed them to facilitate work and negligently failed to replace them before leaving, leaving the excavation unprotected. The plaintiff husband, blind since childhood, approached the intersection carrying piano-tuning tools in one hand and using a cane in the other to feel his way. Because the barriers were absent, he did not discover the excavation; the jury could find that the cane would have detected the barriers had they been in place.

Issue

Whether the evidence was sufficient to support municipal negligence where the city temporarily removed barricades from an excavation in a parking strip, and whether the city owed only the same reasonable-care duty to blind pedestrians as to others without a special reduction in protection. Also at issue was whether the parking strip instruction and the damages submission were proper.

Rule

A city must maintain its streets, sidewalks, and adjacent parking strips in a reasonably safe condition, and that duty is a continuing one. The city is not an insurer and need provide only reasonable warning, but its duty of reasonable care includes pedestrians who are blind or otherwise physically infirm and who are themselves exercising the care that an ordinarily prudent person with the same disability would exercise under the circumstances. Correlatively, the city must afford such protection as would bring the danger to the notice of a person so afflicted.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

In Tacoma, city workers opened a trench beside a sidewalk to repair a water main and set up sturdy sawhorses around it that morning. At lunch, a crew member moved the sawhorses to bring in equipment and left for another site without putting them back; during that interval, Dana Ortiz, who was lawfully walking along the route, stepped into the unguarded trench and was injured.

If Dana sues the city for negligence, which is the strongest response to the city's argument that it satisfied its duty by erecting barricades earlier in the day?

Explanation. The governing rule is that a municipality's duty to maintain sidewalks and adjacent parking-strip-type areas in a reasonably safe condition is a continuing one. Initial placement of adequate barricades does not end the duty if city workers later remove them and leave the hazard unprotected. The city is not an insurer, and complete barricading is not always required; the issue is whether reasonable protection or warning was maintained at the time of the accident.