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Slip And Fall Injury Liability On Philadelphia Sidewalks
In cases involving slip and fall injuries on sidewalks, there are two general categories of cases, each of which has its own rules regarding liability. In cases in which the injury was caused by a failure to maintain or repair the sidewalk, that is where the defect “was occasioned, or knowingly permitted to exist, by either the tenant in sole possession or the owner,” Golden v. City of Phila., 57 A.2d 429, 430 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1948), the primary duty is on the property owner or tenant.
In contrast, where the defect is a result of the construction or design of the sidewalk, and such defect was created by the municipality, the municipality is the “active tortfeasor,” and it cannot seek indemnification from the property owner. Id. Where the city itself has created a hazardous condition through its contractors or architects, the property owner has no duty to eliminate the condition.
The right of indemnity rests upon a difference between the primary and the secondary liability of two persons each of whom is made responsible by the law to an injured party. It is a right which enures to a person who, without active fault
on his own part, has been compelled, by reason of some legal obligation, to pay damages occasioned by the initial negligence of another, and for which he himself is only secondarily liable. The difference between primary and secondary liability is not based on a difference in degrees of negligence or on any doctrine of comparative negligence. . . . It depends on a difference in the character or kind of the wrongs which cause the injury and in the nature of the legal obligation owed
by each of the wrongdoers to the injured person. . . . [T]he important point to be noted in all the cases is that secondary as distinguished from primary liability rests upon a fault that is imputed or constructive only, being based on some legal
relation between the parties, or arising from some positive rule of common or statutory law or because of a failure to discover or correct a defect or remedy a dangerous condition caused by the act of the one primarily responsible. In the
case of concurrent or joint tortfeasors, having no legal relation to one another, each of them owing the same duty to the injured party, and involved in an accident in which the injury occurs, there is complete unanimity among the authorities
everywhere that no right of indemnity exists on behalf of either against the other; in such a case, there is only a common liability and not a secondary one, even though one may have been very much more negligent than the other.
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