Morris

Plaintiff sued the city and county of San Francisco for damages to her business as a hotel-keeper caused by the construction by the city under contract of a public improvement known as the Stockton Street tunnel. The suit was based upon a claim filed with the board of supervisors as required by the charter. The items of damage specified in the claim were:

The complaint alleged that the $35,000 item accrued from the total loss and destruction of plaintiff’s business of conducting the hotel; that the $5,000 item accrued from the loss of credit with her bank and with merchants with whom she had been dealing; “that immediately upon the commencement of said work [construction of the tunnel], and by reason thereof, the plaintiff’s said hotel business commenced to decrease, . . . and said hotel was by the plaintiff conducted and operated in order to preserve her said business and for the purpose of preventing the same from becoming lost to her, at a continued money loss from the time of the commencement of said work up to and including the thirty-first day of December, 1913.” The expense of the conduct of her business over the gross income for that period was alleged to be $5,802.82.…