Home/Supreme Court of Missouri/Davoren v. Kansas City

Davoren v. Kansas City

273 S.W. 401, 308 Mo. 513, 40 A.L.R. 473, 1925 Mo. LEXIS 676
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedMay 23, 1925
StatusPublished
Cited by29 cases

This text of 273 S.W. 401 (Davoren v. Kansas City) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Davoren v. Kansas City, 273 S.W. 401, 308 Mo. 513, 40 A.L.R. 473, 1925 Mo. LEXIS 676 (Mo. 1925).

Opinions

*519 WOODSON, J.

This was a suit instituted in the Circuit Court of Jackson County by the plaintiffs, husband and wife, against Kansas City, the defendant, for the alleged negligence in drowning their minor son, six years and seven months old. The ease was tried before the court and jury, which resulted in a verdict and judgment for the plaintiffs for $10,000; and after moving unsuccessfully for a new trial the defendant duly appealed the case to this court.

The pleadings are unassailed and therefore it would be useless to notice them.

The facts of the case are simple, and practically undisputed. The name of the dead child for whose life the parents sued, was Karl Davoren, who had a twin brother' named Kenneth, who was also drowned at the same time and place that Karl lost his life. They came to their death by drowning- in a pond which was created by the city in constructing a high fill, or dam, across a ravine, for street purposes, on top of which a street was duly constructed. The city neglected to provide a culvert or other outlet sufficient to allow the surface water to escape that accumulated above said fill. Said pond of water was entirely upon private property, and was no! so closely located to a public street as to endanger the lives of the deceased’ children by falling into it while passing along the street.

The pond was located on the south side of Twenty-first Street between Bales Avenue and Askew Street in *520 Kansas City. Bales Avenue and Askew Street run north and south, and Twenty-first Street runs east and west, and crosses Bales and Askew. In the space between Bales and Askew the natural topography of the land is in the form of a ravine or draw, several blocks long, running in a northerly and southerly direction. The natural drainage of surface water through this ravine or draw was toward the north. The ravine began at Twenty-fifth or Twenty-sixth Street, which is four or five blocks south of Twenty-first Street, and. extended north to Eighteenth Street, making the ravine about eight blocks in length.' The ravine drained all of that territory lying between Twenty-sixth Street on the south, Bales Avenue on the west, Askew Street on the east, and Eighteenth Street on the north — a territory comprising eight square city blocks. Four or five of these square blocks lay south of Twenty-first Street.

In 1901 the defendant city constructed a high fill along and upon Twenty-first Street, directly across this ravine, like a dam. The height of the fill was about twelve to fourteen feet above the surface of the water at the time of the drowning. The length of the fill was about 150 feet from east to west.

Previous • to the construction of this fill there was no pond on the private property south of Twenty-first Street. Immediately after the city constructed this fill or dam, however, the surface water from the land to the south began damming up on account of the fill, and accumulating upon the private property south of the fill. The result was that a deep pond formed thereon, extending about 250- feet across at its widest point, measuring east and west, and about 200 feet north and south. The contour and appearance of the pond are shown by the diagram and by the photographs in evidence. The pond was right up against the embankment of the fill; that is, the embankment formed the north shore of the pond.

*521

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Bluebook (online)
273 S.W. 401, 308 Mo. 513, 40 A.L.R. 473, 1925 Mo. LEXIS 676, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/davoren-v-kansas-city-mo-1925.