Opinion
November 14, 1949.
In an action to recover damages for personal injuries suffered in a fall from a mound of snow on the sidewalk, and for loss of services, judgment, entered on the verdict of a jury in favor of respondents, reversed on the law and the facts, with costs, and the complaint dismissed on the law, with costs. The injured respondent lived in a house in the middle of the block. She left her home to visit a neighbor across the street. Instead of walking along the cleared portion of the sidewalk to the cleaned crosswalk at the corner, to cross the street, she climbed over mounds of snow and ice at the curbs. In returning the same way the accident happened when she slipped while stepping off the mound to the sidewalk. In clearing the roadway the appellant municipality's snowplow cast snow upon the edge of a ten-foot sidewalk on both sides of the street, where it remained for about two weeks during a period of low temperatures. The fact that the said respondent was injured in climbing over the mound of snow and ice does not prove, or tend to prove, that the defendant municipality was guilty of wrongdoing or breach of duty under the circumstances of this case, where it appears that the remainder of the sidewalks and the crosswalks were cleared of snow. Nolan, P.J., Carswell, Adel, Sneed and MacCrate, JJ., concur. [See post, p. 847.]