Dowling v. City of New York

Headnote

Negligence — streets — New York city — street running to bank of canal and continuing on other side — failure to erect guard along bank — when city liable for death of one who drove along street into canal and was drowned.

Dowling v. City of New York, 208 App. Div. 704 , affirmed.

Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the second judicial

department, entered December 12, 1923, unanimously affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action to recover for the death of plaintiff's intestate alleged to have been occasioned through the negligence of defendant. Decedent, while driving a sedan automobile at night in a westerly direction along Degraw street in the borough of Brooklyn, ran into the Gowanus canal and was drowned. The evidence tended to show that to the uninitiated stranger approaching on Degraw street, it had every semblance of a continuous street extending without interruption over the actual depressed area where the width of the canal lay hidden and undisclosed from view, and that notwithstanding this fact there was no bar or guard whatever to prevent approaching vehicles from going into the water.