Levitt v. City of El Paso

423 S.W.2d 402, 1967 Tex. App. LEXIS 2688
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 6, 1967
DocketNo. 5916
StatusPublished

This text of 423 S.W.2d 402 (Levitt v. City of El Paso) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Levitt v. City of El Paso, 423 S.W.2d 402, 1967 Tex. App. LEXIS 2688 (Tex. Ct. App. 1967).

Opinion

OPINION

CLAYTON, Justice.

This is a personal injury suit filed by Leonard S. Levitt, individually and as next friend of his wife, Barbara Levitt, appellants here, for damages for personal injuries of the wife who caught her heel in a sidewalk in the City of El Paso, Texas, causing her to fall to the sidewalk. The petition alleged negligence on the part of the City, appellee here, in not repairing the condition of the sidewalk, which condition it knew or should have known had existed for some time. The City answered by general denial, absence of negligence on the part of the City, and negligence on the part of the wife in failing to keep a proper lookout, and open and obvious and unavoidable accident. Trial was to a jury, but at the termination of plaintiffs’ testimony, upon motion of the City, an instructed verdict was rendered in favor of the City and judgment for defendant, based on such verdict, was entered.

Appellants present a sole point of error, directed at the instructed verdict and judgment thereon on the basis that the City had no duty to repair the defect complained of by plaintiffs and no evidence showing negligence on the part of the City.

We affirm this judgment.

Appellants present two citations: City of Houston v. Watson, 376 S.W.2d 23 (Tex.Civ.App., 1964; ref., n. r. e.), in which he stated it was held that:

“ * * * under evidence the City was under duty to use ordinary care and to make reasonable inspection which would have disclosed disintegration of temporary asphalt repairs and a dangerous situation could have been remedied prior to the accident.
“To render a city liable for injuries resulting from defect in street, the City must have actual or constructive notice of defect. City with knowledge of hole in street had a duty to repair it if it was deep enough to endanger the safety of those using street.
“The Appellant would show the Court that there was sufficient evidence to show that the defects were not minor or trivial in nature, but that it was a dangerous condition existing, and said condition was known to the Appellee and its agents.”

The City replies:

“In the Watson case a boy riding a motor scooter was thrown when he hit a hole in the vehicular driveway. The hole was ‘variously estimated to be a depth approximately 3 inches to 6 to 8 inches, and width ranging from 3 to 5 feet across the street and from í\/¿ to several feet parallel thereto.’ (376 S.W.2d 27, near top of right column.) The hole was reported to the City about two months before the accident, and the City did a temporary, emergency repair job, using cold asphalt mix. The paving was concrete and the City knew that the cold mix would not stand up; the intent was to notify the ‘permanent paving division’ so that it could follow with the necessary concrete repair work. (P. 27, paragraph in middle of right column.) The temporary repair ‘broke down, washed out and disintegrated,’ so that the hole was again in about the same condition as when the temporary repair was made. (P. 28, first [404]*404paragraph beginning on left column.) This was reported to the City about a week before the accident (P. 28, second paragraph beginning on left column) but still the repairs were not made. There is no similarity between our case and this Houston case, in which there was evidence that the hole was as much as 8 inches deep, ‘several’ feet wide, and 5 feet long, and in the path of a motor scooter.”

In the instant case the injured wife testified to the following with reference to the hole in which she caught her heel:

“Q I believe you told us before that it was just a heel size, about an inch in diameter ?
A A little more. What did I say, a quarter or a fifty cent piece, something like that.
Q You said about the size of a quarter?
A Something like that.
Q And it was about a half inch to an inch deep, just enough to catch your heel or something like that?
A That’s right.”

The second case cited by appellants was City of San Antonio v. Chabot, 318 S.W.2d 485, 486, 487 (Tex.Civ.App., 1958; ref., n. r. e.). There, the facts were:

“ * * * The sidewalk on which plaintiff was walking was built in slabs with expansion joints. As plaintiff walked south she approached the hole which was on her side of an expansion joint. The concrete had disintegrated and crumbled out, forming a triangular shaped hole. The apex of the triangle was toward the plaintiff. A photograph with a ruler beside the hole shows that the distance from the apex to the base was about six inches. Near the apex, the triangle was about one inch wide, and at the base it was about four inches wide. Even when all the dirt was cleaned from the hole, it was less than one inch deep at its deepest point.”
“ * * * Actual measurements showed that the hole was fifteen-sixteenths of an inch deep when the dirt was cleaned from the hole. Plaintiff testified that the hole was filled with loose dust and debris when she fell. The area around the hole was cracked in a jigsaw fashion.”
* * ⅜ * * *
“ * * * She testified: T mean my heel went down in the hole and apparently fitted into it enough to stay there until I was thrown with such violence that it pulled out.’ ”

Neither of the cited cases compare with the case before us on the triviality of the facts. In the Chabot case the trial court gave a judgment for the plaintiff, based on a jury verdict. The Court of Civil Appeals reversed -and rendered judgment for the City, saying:

“A municipality is required to exercise ordinary care in constructing reasonably safe sidewalks and streets and in maintaining them. * * * In applying the rule courts must first determine whether or not, as a matter of law, a defect is so trivial as to impose no duty upon a city. If the court determines the defect is not so trivial, there remains a jury question on the issue of the city’s negligence. In both instances the basic problem is the same, whether the city exercised ordinary care, but in the one, the court determines the problem as a matter of law; in the other, the court leaves the decision to the jury. Our problem is whether the instant defect was so trivial that it ought to have been decided as a matter of law.”
⅝ s(s ⅝ ⅜ ⅜ ;ji

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Related

City of Houston v. Watson
376 S.W.2d 23 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1964)
City of San Antonio v. Chabot
318 S.W.2d 485 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1958)
Hutson v. City of Houston
418 S.W.2d 911 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1967)

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Bluebook (online)
423 S.W.2d 402, 1967 Tex. App. LEXIS 2688, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/levitt-v-city-of-el-paso-texapp-1967.