Jackson v. Boston Elevated Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 May 1914
• Parties: JACKSON v. BOSTON ELEVATED RY. CO. (two cases).
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

217 Mass. 515

105 N.E. 379

JACKSON v. BOSTON ELEVATED RY. CO. (two cases).

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

May 20, 1914

COUNSEL

James P. Magenis and John Wentworth, both of Boston, for plaintiffs.

Cyrus Brewer, of Boston, for defendant.

OPINION

BRALEY J.

The plaintiff in the second action is not entitled to consequential damages unless his wife, the plaintiff in the first action, can recover for personal injuries suffered while she was a passenger on the defendant's railway. The defendant contends that the verdict ordered by the trial court should stand as there was no evidence of its negligence. If a view of the evidence most favorable to her is taken, the jury would have been warranted in finding that upon entering the defendant's station carrying an infant child on her left arm, she found herself in the midst of a crowd filling the station, by which at first she was jostled and steadily forced towards the track. As the train came in the crowd moving to board the car became more boisterous and energetic, and she was caught in the moving mass, pushed through the vestibule into the car, where she was injured by falling over the dress-suit case of a passenger in the car when it arrived. The carrying of traveling bags or bundles by passengers is an ordinary incident of travel, and unless the carrier can be charged with reasonable notice that such articles are so placed as to become obstacles to the safe entrance or exit of passengers, no neglect of duty is shown. Lyons v. Boston Elevated Railway, 204 Mass. 227, 90 N.E. 419, and cases cited. Hotenbrink v. Boston Elevated Railway, 211 Mass. 77, 97, N.E. 624, 39 L. R. A. (N. S.) 419.

It is not, however, contended by the plaintiff, that this transient obstruction, of which the defendant's servants are not shown to have had any knowledge, caused her injuries. The jury could have further found as she testified, that upon the arrival of the train she was in the center of the crowd, and 'they crowded me in with them, and pushed me over the dress-suit case,' and that if her movements had been unhampered she would have entered the car free from the overmastering coercion of the crowd, and the accident would not have happened. As said by Mr. Justice Morton in Coy v. Boston Elevated Railway, 212 Mass. 307, 309, 98 N.E 1041, 1042, when defining the relation of passenger and carrier, under somewhat similar circumstances, 'it was the duty of the defendant to protect its passengers from harmful misconduct on the part of other passengers so far as the same could be reasonably anticipated and guarded against, and to that end to use all practicable means consistent with proper efficiency in the management of its business which experience or a due consideration of the circumstances might suggest to prevent the occurrence of such an accident as happened. Kelley v Boston Elevated Railway, 210 Mass. 454 ; Glennen v. Boston Elevated Railway, 207 Mass. 497 [93 N.E. 700, 32 L. R....