Commonwealth v. Boston & Maine Railroad

• Decision Date: 23 October 1880
• Citation: 129 Mass. 500
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: Commonwealth v. Boston & Maine Railroad

129 Mass. 500

Commonwealth v. Boston & Maine Railroad

Supreme Court of Massachusetts

October 23, 1880

Middlesex. Indictment in nine counts, on the St. of 1874, c 372, § 163, for causing the death of John H. R. Hill. Some of the counts charged that Hill was a passenger; and others that he was not a passenger, nor in the employment of the defendant corporation, and that he was in the exercise of due care.

At the trial in the Superior Court, before Rockwell, J., there was evidence tending to show that Hill left Boston on October 22 1878, as a passenger on a train of cars of the defendant for Oak Grove; that, before reaching the station, the conductor called out "Oak Grove," and the train slowed up and, when opposite the station, almost stopped, but started again as the engineer saw a train approaching on a parallel track between the track his train was on and the station; that Hill stepped off of the platform of a car, which had passed the station, just before the train started, reached the ground in safety, and was killed by the approaching train while crossing to the station; that, if he had remained on the car, he would not have been injured; that, if he had looked before getting off, he would have seen the approaching train; and that the defendant was negligent in the management of this train.

The defendant asked the judge to rule that Hill, by voluntarily leaving the train while it was in motion, ceased to be a passenger; and that there was no evidence to support any of the counts of the indictment. The judge declined so to rule; and instructed the jury that, if the train had arrived at the station, although it had not entirely stopped, and Hill stepped off, without injury from the train he had been on, and, while on his way to the platform by the way provided, was injured by the gross negligence of the defendant, they might return a verdict of guilty, although Hill was not in the exercise of due care. The jury returned a verdict of guilty; and the defendant alleged exceptions.

Exceptions sustained.

D. S. Richardson & G. F. Richardson, for the defendant.

T. H. Sweetser & G. A. James, for the Commonwealth.

Soule, J. Morton, J., absent. Lord, J., did not sit.

OPINION

Soule, J.

It is contended on the part of the government that, where the person killed was a passenger, the statute does not require, in order to the maintenance of an indictment, that he should have been using due care. But whether this is so or not need not be decided, because, in the opinion of a majority of the court, when Hill was killed he was not a passenger within the meaning of the statute.

It is undoubtedly true that one who has bought a ticket, or otherwise become entitled to transportation on a particular train of cars of a railroad corporation, is ordinarily a passenger of the corporation from the time when he reasonably and properly starts from the ticket-office or waiting-room in the station to take his seat in a car of the train, till he has reached the station to which he is entitled to be carried, and has had an opportunity, by safe and convenient means, to leave the train and roadway of the corporation...