Chicago City Ry. Co. v. Lannon

• Decision Date: 24 October 1904
• Citation: 72 N.E. 585,212 Ill. 477
• Parties: CHICAGO CITY RY. CO. v. LANNON.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

212 Ill. 477

72 N.E. 585

CHICAGO CITY RY. CO.

v.LANNON. ^*

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Oct. 24, 1904.

Appeal from Appellate Court, First District.

Action by Charles J. Lannon against the Chicago City Railway Company and another. Judgment for plaintiff was affirmed by the Appellate Court, and defendant railway company appeals. Affirmed.William J. Hynes, James W. Duncan, and C. Le Roy Brown, for appellant.

Theodore G. Case and John T. Murray (A. W. Browne, of counsel), for appellee.

This is an action on the case, brought by appellee, Charles J. Lannon, against the Chicago City Railway Company, appellant, and the Pabst Brewing Company, to recover for personal injuries sustained by him on June 4, 1901, while riding as a passenger on one of appellant's cars. On the morning in question, appellee, who was a bricklayer, boarded a car bound for the stockyards. He sat at the extreme left end of the last seat at the rear of the car, facing the front. The car was open, and the seats extended across it without any center passageway. As the car proceeded southwest on Archer avenue it came up behind and near to a heavily loaded beer wagon of the Pabst Brewing Company going in the same direction along the car tracks. The driver of the wagon attempted to turn out of the railway tracks to the left, and in a southerly direction, during which time the car kept moving at about three or four miles an hour. The wagon got far enough from the tracks for the front end of the car to pass it, though in close proximity. Just as the part of the car where the appellee sat was about to pass, the corner of the wagon box collided with the car, and the appellee's arm was crushed at the elbow between the wagon box and the side of the car. The suit was brought against both the Chicago City Railway Company and the Pabst Brewing Company, and the jury found the defendant brewing company not guilty, and the defendant the Chicago Railway Company guilty, and assessed plaintiff's damages at $5,000. An appeal was prayed to the Appellate Court for the First District, where the judgment of the superior court was affirmed, and a further appeal has been prayed to this court.

WILKIN, J. (after stating the facts).

The defendant street car company requested the court to give an instruction to the jury to the effect that the street car had the right of way over other vehicles, and that the jury had the right to take that fact into consideration in determining whether or not its servants were negligent at the time of the accident; but the court refused to give it. It also offered in evidence, but the court refused to admit, an ordinance of the city of Chicago providing that street cars should have the right of way as against other vehicles, and making it unlawful for the driver of any wagon to obstruct a street car. Both of these rulings are urged as reversible error. The question at issue was not as to the right of way of the street car, or whether or not the driver of the beer wagon was a trespasser liable to punishment for obstructing the car, but whether or not the servants of the appellant negligently, carelessly, wrongfully, and...