Volume 53 — Washington Reports, Second Series

[1] MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS — TORTS — OBSTRUCTIONS ON SIDEWALKS — CONSTRUCTIVE NOTICE. In an action against the city of Seattle for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff when she fell on an icy sidewalk, a snowfall was not itself notice to the city of a dangerous condition in any particular place, where some abutting property owners in the vicinity of the place of the accident had cleared snow and ice from sidewalks in compliance with a city ordinance requiring them to do so, and the city did not know which sidewalks, if any, had not been cleared. [2] SAME — NEGLIGENCE OF CITY — EVIDENCE — FACTORS TO BE ESTABLISHED. Before a city can be liable for neglect of duty to keep streets safe, it must have notice of a dangerous condition which it did not create, and a reasonable opportunity to correct it. [3] SAME — ACTIONS — EVIDENCE — SUFFICIENCY — ACTUAL NOTICE OF DANGEROUS CONDITION. In such an action, the city did not have actual notice of the dangerous condition, where the only attempt to show such notice was the testimony of a policeman, living across the street from the spot where the plaintiff fell, who saw that the sidewalk was not cleared while he was shoveling his own sidewalk, but there was no showing that it was his duty, as a policeman, to notify the street department of the condition of sidewalks in general or of the place of the injury in particular. [4] SAME — TORTS — OBSTRUCTIONS ON SIDEWALKS — CONSTRUCTIVE NOTICE — PERIOD OF TIME CONSTITUTING. Constructive notice to a city may be inferred from the elapse of time a dangerous condition is permitted to continue when it is long enough to be able to say that it ought to have known about the condition.<page_number>Page 229</page_number> [5] SAME. In such an action, held that a period of fifteen hours after the snowfall had ceased was insufficient to constitute constructive notice, as a matter of law. [6] SAME — ACTIONS — EVIDENCE — SUFFICIENCY — NEGLIGENCE OF CITY. In such an action, the city was not negligent, as a matter of law, where city crews worked on a twenty-four hour basis, including Saturday and Sunday, clearing and sanding streets, giving first attention to trouble spots and complaints, and the sidewalk in question was not shown to have deserved priority by reason of its condition or location. [1] See 25 Am. Jur. 795.