Felker v. Bangor Ry. & Elec. Co.

• Decision Date: 14 October 1914
• Parties: FELKER v. BANGOR RY. & ELECTRIC CO.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

91 A. 980

112 Me. 255

FELKER

v. BANGOR RY. & ELECTRIC CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Oct. 14, 1914.

On Motion from Supreme Judicial Court, Penobscot County, at Law.

Action by Emily E. Felker against the Bangor Railway & Electric Company. On motion for a new trial. Overruled.

Argued before SAVAGE, C. J., and SPEAR, CORNISH, BIRD, HALEY, and PHILBROOK, JJ.

D. I. Gould, of Bangor, for plaintiff. E. C. Ryder, of Bangor, for defendant.

SAVAGE, C. J. Case to recover for injuries sustained in a collision between the carriage in which the plaintiff was riding and the electric car of the defendant company. The plaintiff obtained a verdict for $1,200. The case comes up on the defendant's motion for a new trial on the usual grounds. But counsel have argued only the question of damages, and to that question we shall confine ourselves.

The plaintiff is a married woman, and at the time of the accident was about 71 years of age, and in ordinarily good health for a woman of her age. The carriage in which she was riding was overturned, and she was thrown violently upon the ground, between the railroad tracks. The evidence would warrant a jury in finding that she sustained a severe nervous shock; that two of her ribs were broken, and that she was considerably bruised about her back and other parts of her body; that in consequence of her injuries she suffered great pain for several weeks on account of the irritation caused by the pricking ends of the fractured ribs, that she suffered also in other ways; that it was necessary, in order to ease her pain, to turn her in bed and give her a rubbing half a dozen times a night; that she was unable to sleep well nights, that as a result of the shock a serious nervous condition was developed, from which she had not fully recovered at the time of the trial, 14 months after the injury. Her attending physician, in testifying, spoke of this condition as "this horrible state of the nervous system." And the jury might find that, although the fractured ribs united well in a few weeks, she suffered even up to the trial from pain and lameness in her right side, and was unable to do any work of any consequence.

It appears that while confined to her bed in consequence of her injuries, the plaintiff had an attack, but not a severe one, of hypostatic pneumonia, which is a phase of pneumonia incident to old age. It is not claimed that the pneumonia was caused by her physical injuries. Whether she was more susceptible to it by...