Chesapeake & O. Ry. Co. v. King

• Decision Date: 22 January 1900
• Docket Number: 747.
• Parties: CHESAPEAKE & O. RY. CO. v. KING.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

99 F. 251

CHESAPEAKE & O. RY. CO. v. KING.

No. 747.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

January 22, 1900

Only the facts essential to the consideration of the single question upon which a reversal is sought need be stated. The plaintiff below, a young woman, sustained very serious injuries by collision with a railroad train while crossing a railway track which intervened between the station of the company at Central City, W. Va., and the nearest public highway or street connecting the village and station. She had taken passage at Ashland, Ky., upon an accommodation train for Central City, a station east of Ashland. Between Central City and Ashland the tracks are double, and about seven feet apart. The tract next the station is used only by east-bound trains, while the other, or northern, track is used only by trains going in the opposite direction. The village of Central City lies wholly north of the railroad tracks, while the station or depot is on the opposite or south side of the railroad. The streets of the town running at right angles with the railroad do not cross its tracks, but extend from them south to the Ohio river. This station house is situated between two streets extending from the railroad to the town and is about 100 feet from Fourteenth street, which is the nearest of them. Fourteenth street is, therefore, the one used chiefly, if not altogether, by the travel between the depot and the town, and has a pavement or sidewalk only on its western side. The station consists of three connected rooms-- a waiting room, a ticket office, and a freight room--extending along the track east and west for a distance of 50 feet. In front of this station is a wooden platform about 6 feet wide. Between this platform and the nearest track is a cinder path, also about 6 feet wide, which extends west beyond the station to a point 7 feet west of the eastern line of Fourteenth street. Persons going from the town to the station and from the station to the town were accustomed to cross the tracks at any point between the station and Fourteenth street, and this mode of going to and from the station, which was only 100 feet east of Fourteenth street was well known to the railroad company, and was unobjected to. The plaintiff's train stopped as usual in front of the station, and she alighted, as was customary, on the cinder path next the station platform. Following this path to the rear of her train, which had come from the west, she crossed the most southerly track immediately behind the standing train, and diagonally in the direction of Fourteenth street, and continued this diagonal, course across the space between the two tracks. This diagonal direction threw her back partly towards the direction from which a freight train was approaching. Just as she was crossing the second track she was struck and seriously injured by a train rapidly passing in a direction opposite to that from which her own train had come. This train approached the station with all the usual and proper signals, and her danger was not observed until too late to avert the accident. The evidence made it clear that she could not have seen the train until after she came out from behind the standing train, and there was also evidence tending to show that the noise made by the standing engine, through escaping steam, was likely to deaden the effect of the signals given by the approaching train, as well as the noise made by its travel. Plaintiff testified that she neither heard nor saw the train which collided with her, and that she was looking from the time she started across these tracks. But it is clear that she did not look in the direction from which colliding train approached, for it was broad daylight, and after she came out from behind the standing train the approach of a train on the other track from the east could have been seen for half a mile, if she had looked in that direction. There was a rule of the company that all 'trains approaching a station where a passenger train is receiving or discharging passengers must be stopped before reaching the passenger train. ' There was evidence tending strongly to show that on this occasion this rule was not observed by the train which collided with the plaintiff, and that it passed the standing train, from which plaintiff alighted, while it was still receiving and discharging passengers, at a speed of from 10 to 12 miles per hour. At the conclusion of all the evidence the defendant below asked for a peremptory instruction against the plaintiff upon the ground of her contributory negligence. This was overruled, and is the principal error now assigned. The court submitted the case to the jury upon the theory that the plaintiff was still a passenger while making her egress from the station over the premises of the company to the nearest public highway, and therefore entitled to a reasonably safe way of exit, and only required to exercise ordinary care in avoiding danger from the movements of trans over tracks which she was obliged to cross in order to make her way to the public street. The charge of the court in respect to the continuance of the relation of a passenger, after safely alighting at the station, and the degree of care incident to such continued relation, was also excepted to, and presents the same question which arose upon the incontestable facts of the case by the motion for a peremptory instruction.

A. M. J. Cochran, for plaintiff in error.

D. W. Steele, for defendant in error.

Before LURTON and DAY, Circuit Judges, and THOMPSON, District Judge.

LURTON Circuit Judge, after making the foregoing statement of facts, .

This case must turn here, as it did below, upon the single question as to whether the defendant in error, at the time she was injured, stood in the relation of a passenger to the railroad company. The insistence of counsel for the company is that when Miss King alighted from the train on the cinder path, between her train and the depot platform, she was in a place of safety, and the relation of carrier and passenger at an end. It is true that when upon the cinder path there was no obstacle between her and the depot platform. But can it be said that she was clear of train and tracks when it was necessary to cross two tracks before she could get off of the company's premises and upon the public highway? The cinder path was on the company's right of way. She might have pursued that path until she reached a point opposite Fourteenth street, and then crossed. That was doubtless the safer course, for it would have given her a clear view of both tracks. But the evidence tended to show that passengers alighting where she did more usually crossed the tracks immediately in front of the depot, or crossed them obliquely in the direction of the head of Fourteenth street, and that any of these ways of going from the station were equally approved by the company. The question as to whether the company had provided a particular way of egress from its premises, or acquiesced in the crossing of its tracks at any point between the station and the head of the public street was a question of fact submitted to the jury. If it was equally open to her to cross diagonally to Fourteenth street as she did, the question is whether the company was under any obligation to her to so operate its trains that that way off of the company's premises should not be unnecessarily dangerous. If, while making her...