Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Oswald
Decision Date | 21 February 1930 |
Docket Number | No. 19879.,19879. |
Citation | 338 Ill. 270,170 N.E. 247 |
Parties | ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO. v. OSWALD. |
Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Appellate Court, Fourth District, on Appeal from City Court of East St. Louis; William F. Borders, Judge.
Action by Mattie Oswald against the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Judgment for plaintiff was affirmed by the Appellate Court (255 Ill. App. 535), and defendant brings certiorari.
Reversed and remanded.Kramer, Kramer & Campbell and R. E. Costello, all of East St. Louis (Vernon W. Foster and Edward C. Craig, both of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.
Louis Beasley and Edward C. Zulley, both of East St. Louis, for defendant in error.
This cause is here on certiorari to review the record of the Appellate Court for the Fourth District affirming a judgment of the city court of East St. Louis in favor of defendant in error, Mattie Oswald, against plaintiff in error, the Illinois Central Railroad Company, for $5,000 damages in an action for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by her by reason of negligence of plaintiff in error.
Near the east end of the Free Bridge, which connects St. Louis and East St. Louis, plaintiff in error has several tracks which pass under the bridge. Between 10 and 11 o'clock at night, on February 11, 1927, defendant in error and her husband were driving east across the bridge when they observed a large volume of dense, black smoke ahead of them. This smoke was coming from one of plaintiff in error's engines. They stopped about 30 feet from the smoke and waited 5 or 10 minutes for it to clear away, when the wind suddenly changed and blew the smoke over them, and about a second later another car came up from the west and struck their car. Thereafter defendant in error got out of the car and went to the rear of it to see what damage, if any, had been done, and, while she was between the two cars, a third car came up and struck the second, forcing it forward. She was caught between the cars and was severely injured.
Defendant in error's version of the happening of the accident, as shown by the abstract of her testimony, is as follows:
There is an offset or railing between the wagon road and the sidewalk, or pedestrians' way, the latter being about six or eight inches higher than the former.
There are three essential elements in actionable negligence: First, a duty imposed by law to exercise care in favor of the person for whose benefit the duty is imposed; second, the failure to perform that duty; and, third, a consequent injury so connected with the failure to perform the duty that the failure is the proximate cause of the injury. What constitutes proximate cause has been defined in numerous decisions, and there is practically no...
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