Law students hurt in elevator plunge

Nov. 24, 1914: Twenty-one people -- 19 USC law students, a faculty member and a stenographer -- had “squeezed into an elevator” in the Tajo Building at 1st Street and Broadway when the cage “dropped five stories to the pit, 65 feet below,” The Times reported.

The accident occurred as students were “scrambling from a class in torts” and the elevator was “loaded far beyond its safety limit,” the newspaper said. No one escaped injury, but none was killed.

“As a result, damage suits aggregating $250,000 are expected to be filed. The number of broken legs and feet is one of the remarkable features of the accident,” The Times said.

“The majority of the embryonic lawyers will get their first practical legal experience by drawing up papers wherein they are the plaintiffs,” the newspaper noted.

Among the victims: Leo McCarey, the future director of “Going My Way.”