Opinion
June, 1917.
Judgment reversed and new trial granted, costs to abide the event, upon the ground that the evidence does not show that the defendant was negligent. In that regard the case differs from Wahrman v. Board of Education ( 187 N.Y. 331), where the ceiling by reason of its condition was obviously and imminently dangerous, and the defendant, knowing the fact, used the room for the purpose of discharging the very duties the law had placed upon it. In the present instance the defendant had no actual notice of the gas box in the yard, which was obscured and remote, and the event of a student stumbling over it under the circumstances was not so expectable that the defendant was required to search in the grass lest some impediment lurked there. In the present instance we do not regard the defendant as responsible for any culpability attached to the officers whose duty concerned the installation or maintenance of the gas pipe. Jenks, P.J., Thomas, Stapleton, Putnam and Blackmar, JJ., concurred.