Opinion
June 7, 1907.
W.H. Burby, for the appellant.
Harry C. Underhill, for the respondent.
The plaintiff, then two years old, was sitting on the stoop of the defendant's tenement house, when a gust of wind, apparently from the opening on the inside to the roof, or from some open window, slammed the front door shut with such violence as to smash the glass panel in it, and throw the fragments of glass out on the stoop and cut the plaintiff. The negligence is that the door had no hook to fasten it back to the wall of the vestibule when open. It never had one. The house was a new one. The accident happened in July, and both this outer door and the inside vestibule door were standing open. The plaintiff's mother was a tenant of the house, and was also its janitor, and the plaintiff lived with her. There is no evidence that the mother ever complained to the defendant of the lack of a hook on the door, or asked that one be put there.
It would be carrying the liability of a landlord for negligence to an extreme that has no foundation to uphold this judgment. If the door was dangerous without a hook that was just as plain to every one as to the landlord. It has remained until now for any one to suggest that the millions of front doors without hooks to hold them back when open are dangerous.
The judgment should be reversed.
HIRSCHBERG, P.J., WOODWARD, JENKS and MILLER, JJ., concurred.
Judgment of the Municipal Court reversed and new trial ordered, costs to abide the event.