Edwards v. Jacksonville Coach Co.

• Citation: 88 So.2d 543
• Parties: Claudia EDWARDS, Appellant, v. JACKSONVILLE COACH COMPANY, a corporation, Appellee
• Decision Date: 13 June 1956
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Florida

Page 543

88 So.2d 543

Claudia EDWARDS, Appellant, v. JACKSONVILLE COACH COMPANY, a corporation, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Florida, Special Division B

June 13, 1956.

Bedell & Bedell, Jacksonville, for appellant.

Rogers, Towers, Bailey & Jones, Jacksonville, for appellee.

THOMAS, Justice.

The circuit judge granted the motion of the defendant, now appellee, to dismiss the second amended complaint of the plaintiff, now appellant, reciting in his order that the plaintiff declined further to amend.

The sole question presented to this court is whether or not the cause of action was so well stated that the attack upon the pleading should have failed. According to its allegations the appellant paid her fare and became a passenger on one of appellee's buses and was bound for a visit to her physician at Five Points. The appellant was 67 years of age and weighed 210 pounds. One of her arms had been recently broken and she carried it in a cast.

When the time came for appellant to alight, the bus had stopped at an angle to the curb so that the front was but a few inches way while the rear door was from 18 to 24 inches distant. The front door of the bus was so arranged that it would remain open for the free entrance and exit of passengers; the rear one was so constructed that a passenger leaving had to hold it open in order to pass. When the bus stopped, the appellant undertook to leave through the forward door but was ordered by the driver to use the rear door. She tried to follow his instruction, but could not, because of the space between the step and the curb and her disability, hold the door open and step down at the same time. Consequently, the door closed upon her dress, her step missed the curb, she fell into the street and was injured.

We think the appellant should have been permitted to prove what she alleged for the factual situation set out in her complaint was the antithesis of the care which she was entitled to receive as a passenger of the appellee-common carrier. Florida R. Co. v. Dorsey, 59 Fla. 260, 52 So. 963, 966. It was held in that case that a 'common carrier is required to exercise the highest degree of care, foresight, prudence, and diligence reasonably demanded at any given time by the conditions and circumstances then affecting the passenger and the carrier.' The appellee dismisses this authority with the simple statement that it did not involve a situation where the passenger was sick or infirm. But we do not understand how the principle announced there would be inapposite here. The fact that the appellant was infirm would be the more reason for application of the rule to the present controversy.

The appellant directs us to the decision of this court in Tampa Electric Co. v. Fleischaker, 152 Fla. 701, 12 So.2d 901, 902, in which it was held that the high degree of care imposed on a carrier requires it to take notice of a passenger's mental or physical disability and to act...