Home/Supreme Court of Missouri/Newell v. Boatmans Bank

Newell v. Boatmans Bank

216 S.W. 918, 279 Mo. 663, 1919 Mo. LEXIS 177
Supreme Court of Missouri·Decided December 1, 1919·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

RAGLAND, C.

John Odegaard lost his life in the fire which destroyed in the early morning of March 9, 1914, the building occupied by the Missouri Athletic Association. He was about thirty-two years of age, had never been married, and left no relatives in this State. Aged parents, dependent upon him for support and to whose support he was contributing at the time of his death, survived him, and were living in the City of Chicago. This suit was instituted by the public administrator of the City of St. Louis, having in charge his estate, and wherein he seeks to recover damages against defendant as owner of the building for having negligently caused the death of his intestate, in that, it had not prior to the fire equipped said building with suitable and safe fire escapes and balconies as required by the statutes of this State. The defendant answered by way of general denial. An affirmative defense was also pleaded, but it seems to have been abandoned.

The building in question was a seven-story structure situated at the northwest corner of Fourth Street and Washington Avenue in the City of St. Louis. ■ The east half of the building up to the third story was occupied by the defendant as a bank, and was fireproof. The remainder of the building was not fireproof, and was occupied by the Missouri Athletic Association for its various club activities. The kitchen and dining room were on the third floor; a large room used for a banquet hall and dancing and about ten sleeping rooms were on the fourth floor; thirty-six sleeping rooms and a library were on the fifth floor; and thirty-nine bed [666] rooms were on the sixth floor. Some of these rooms were equipped with two beds, so that the sleeping accommodations above the second floor were sufficient for as many as one hundred and twenty-five persons. About seventy persons were sleeping in this part of the building at the time of the fire. Working accommodations were also provided for one hundred and twenty persons above the second floor. There was a three-or-four-story building occupied as a seed store on the west side of defendant’s building and immediately adjacent to it; there was a spiral fire escape on the south side on Washington Avenue, near the southwest corner of the building, which connected with landings at openings into the fifth and sixth stories; there was a stair fire escape on the east side on Fourth Street, near the north end of the building, which extended from the seventh floor, and passed windows in each story all the way down; and there was a metal stairway enclosed in a brick shaft outside of the main wall of the building on the north side and adjoining the projecting ell, which extended from the seventh down to the first floor, and with which each story communicated by a door. To get to it from the fifth floor it was necessary to go from a lobby through what was known as the linen room. There was sufficient blank wall on the Fourth Street side near the southeast corner of the building for a fire escape to have been placed there without passing any window.

The alarm was turned in about 1:55 a. m., and the fire chief arrived on the scene approximately three minutes later. He first observed flames pouring out of the windows in the second and third stories on the south and east sides, the heat being more intense on the east or Fourth Street side. About twenty minutes thereafter the entire east wall went down, carrying with it the major portions of all the floors. The north, south and west walls were left standing, and the rooms adjoining the south wall, as well as most of the floor of the corridors immediately adjoining them, remained intact. [667] The fire must have originated on the floor separating the second and third stories. After it got under headway the central stairway and the central elevator shaft operated as huge chimneys through which masses of flame and smoke shot upward, pouring out in great volumes into the adjacent halls and corridors on each floor. Up and down these corridors men were running to and fro, uttering cries, in vain efforts to escape. No one got out of the building by way of the Fourth Street fire escape, because the flames coming from windows below the sleeping quarters by which it passed made Its use impossible. A few found their way out down through the enclosed stairway and some jumped from the windows on the west side on to the seed store roof. Some half dozen persons came down the Washington Avenue escape, but, so far as the evidence discloses, only one from the fifth floor, a man who occupied Room 1, which had a window opening directly on to the balcony leading to the escape.

The accompanying plat shows the plan of the fifth floor. Odegaard occupied Room 2 the night of the fire. It will be observed that the east-and-west corridor, into which his room opened, had two windows at its west end, through which, apparently, a person could go on to the balcony or landing leading to the Washington Avenue fire escape, and that but a few steps would have [669] sufficed to have taken him from the- door of his room to these windows. There were double sliding doors between Rooms 1 and 2, but they were kept locked and the occupant of Room 2 had no key. From some hearsay evidence, to which no objection was made, it appears that the door from Room 1 into the corridor was locked at the time of the fire and during its progress. This was probably true. An examination of the plat will further disclose that before the partitions were burned the smoke could not get into the east corridor until it had passed up and down the -west corridor and around through the north and the south corridors. In this connection it may be said that the occupant of Room 9 tried the Fourth Street fire escape and. found it too hot, then went west in the north corridor running east and west to the west corridor running-north and south, at this point he found that he could not go south in this corridor on account of the flame and smoke issuing from the elevator shaft and stairway. Occupants of the sixth floor on the north and west sides experienced similar conditions. The body of the occupant of Room 3 was.found just inside the door of his room; it was not burned, but from its appearance he died from suffocation. Room 4 was not occupied.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Newell v. Boatmans Bank, 216 S.W. 918, 279 Mo. 663, 1919 Mo. LEXIS 177 (Mo. 1919).

216 S.W. 918 (Newell v. Boatmans Bank) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Jenkins v. Kurn
144 S.W.2d 76 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1940)
Fox v. Missouri Pacific Railroad
74 S.W.2d 608 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1934)
State v. Carr
270 S.W. 121 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1925)
Magill v. Boatmen's Bank
232 S.W. 448 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1921)