Blondel v. St. Paul City Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 November 1896
• Parties: BLONDEL v ST. PAUL CITY RY. CO.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

66 Minn. 284

68 N.W. 1079

BLONDELvST. PAUL CITY RY. CO.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Nov. 20, 1896.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

1. Evidence considered as to the plaintiff's alleged contributory negligence, and held that it sustains the verdict.

2. The qualification of a witness to testify as an expert is a question for the trial court, whose decision will not be reversed on appeal unless it is manifestly against the weight of the evidence.

Appeal from district court, Ramsey county; J. J. Egan, Judge.

Action by Alfonso Blondel against the St. Paul City Railway Company. There was a verdict for plaintiff, and from an order denying a new trial defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Munn, Boyesen & Thygeson, for appellant.

McCafferty & Noyes, for respondent.

START, C. J.

This is a personal injury case, in which the plaintiff had a verdict for $200, and the defendant appealed from an order denying its motion for a new trial. Two reasons are urged by the defendant why the order should be reversed:

1. That the verdict is not sustained by the evidence, because it shows that the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence. The plaintiff's evidence tended to show that he was a passenger on an electric car on the defendant's street-railway line; that there was a sharp curve in the track at Marshall and Prior avenues, in the city of St. Paul, and that, when the car was some three or four blocks from this curve, he left his seat and went to the rear vestibule, where the conductor was standing, and asked him as to the point it would be necessary for him to leave the car to go to the Town and Country Club; that while thus engaged, and standing by the conductor, the car passed the curve without slackingits speed, and at a dangerous rate,-some 14 or 15 miles an hour,-as plaintiff claims, whereby he was thrown against the wall of the vestibule, and his hand and arm injured. He admitted that he knew of the curve, and that the car was approaching it at a fast rate of speed. The evidence on the part of the defendant tended to show that the car was not driven at an unsafe rate of speed around the curve, and it also contradicted the evidence of the plaintiff in other important particulars. The defendant claims that, as a matter of law, the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence in remaining on the platform by the conductor, instead of going inside of the car, as it approached the curve. But he had a right to assume that the persons in charge of the car would slacken the speed of the car, and not pass the curve at an unsafe rate of speed; and whether, under all the circumstances of the case as disclosed by the evidence, he was guilty of contributory negligence in the premises, was a question of fact for the jury. The verdict is sustained by the evidence.

2. That ...