Black v. Warehouse Investment Co.

This is an appeal from a judgment in defendant’s favor following an order granting defendant’s motion for a nonsuit.

The action was one for damages for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff by falling into an unguarded elevator shaft in a building owned by the defendant. The facts upon which the plaintiff relied for his recovery, and upon which he predicates his claim for a reversal of said judgment, are substantially these: The defendant Warehouse Investment Company was, at and for some time prior to the injury complained of, the owner of a warehouse in San Francisco fronting on Townsend Street on the north, and extending to King Street, designated in the record herein as the “old” building. The said defendant was also at the time of the accident engaged in the erection of another warehouse building designated as the “new” building, adjacent to the former building but fronting on King Street and extending back to a private alley, also owned by the defendant, and which ran through, and under the second floor of, the old warehouse building. The general brick and steel work of the new building was being done under a contract with Anderson & Rainey, but from the operation of…