Central National Bank & Trust Co. v. Lederer Strauss & Co.

Defendant owns a four-story brick building in Des Moines, at the southwest corner of the intersection of Court Avenue, which runs east and west, and Third Street, which runs north and south. Along the west wall of the building is a public alley paved with brick. Defendant occupied the second and third floors and the west part of the ground floor, but leased the fourth floor 'to the Packard Manufacturing Company, of which decedent was the secretary.

Attached to the west wall of the building was a steel fire escape. The lower eighteen feet of the escape was a counterbalanced stair, which, when…