Jacobs v. Kansas City Rys. Co.

• Decision Date: 05 January 1920
• Docket Number: No. 13270.,13270.
• Citation: 217 S.W. 579
• Parties: JACOBS v. KANSAS CITY RYS. CO.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

217 S.W. 579

JACOBS v. KANSAS CITY RYS. CO.

No. 13270.

Kansas City Court of Appeals. Missouri.

January 5, 1920.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jackson County; Allen C. Southern, Judge.

"Not to be officially published."

Action by Florence Brehm against the Kansas City Railways Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Pending appeal, plaintiff died, and Floyd E. Jacobs was appointed administrator of her estate. Affirmed.

Clyde Taylor, of Kansas City, Mo., R. J. Higgins, of Kansas City, Kan., and Roscoe P. Conkling and Charles L. Carr, both of Kansas City, Mo., for appellant.

J. K. Cubbison and W. G. Holt, both of Kansas City, for respondent.

BLAND, J.

Florence Brehm recovered a verdict and judgment for personal injuries in the sum of $1,000, and defendant has appealed. After the case reached this court, the death of plaintiff, Florence Brehm, was suggested, and the case was revived in the name of Floyd E. Jacobs, administrator of her estate.

The facts show that between 9 p. m. and 10 p. m. of May 14, 1916, deceased was a passenger upon one of defendant's street cars proceeding east on Fifteenth street near Crystal avenue, in Kansas City, Mo. When the motorman approached Crystal avenue, the conductor hollered, "End of the line." Thereupon, as was the custom, she got up in the car and with a bundle under her left arm proceeded to the rear vestibule, Which had a curved railing running through the center to mark off spaces to be used by persons boarding and alighting from the car. The exit portion was next to the body of the car, and the entrance portion was to the rear and west of the exit portion. She did not leave by the exit portion for the reason that the conductor was sitting therein counting his transfers, with his feet blocking that portion, so she started to go out through the entrance portion. When she reached a point on the platform behind the railing around the conductor, the car came to a stop and then started with a sudden jerk. At this time she was standing facing the east, or the direction in which the car was going, with her back to the west. She testified that when the car started with a jerk she was thrown forward in the direction in which the car was going, and at the same time she grabbed with one hand for the railing that separates the entrance from the exit portion. She missed the railing and grabbed for it with the other hand. This caused her to be thrown around so that her head fell out of the vestibule onto the street where it struck, her side on the steps and her feet in the vestibule. Defendant's evidence tended to show that there was no starting and jerking of the car, but that she fainted about the time the car stopped.

She pleaded in her petition that she was thrown and injured by reason of the sudden starting of the car. Defendant contends that the way in which she claimed she was injured is contrary to physical laws, it being contended that when a person is standing facing forward upon a car, without holding to any fixed object, and the car is given a sudden jerk forward, the effect will be to carry the feet forward quicker than the rest of the body, causing the person to fall backward instead of forward. In support of its contention that the facts in this case show that this would have been the inevitable consequence of the sudden jerk of the car, defendant cites the cases of Scroggins v. Railway, 138 Mo. App. 215, 120 S. W. 731, and Daniels v. Railway, 177 Mo. App. 280, 164 S. W. 154, and like cases.

We think the facts in this case are somewhat different from the facts in those cases. In those cases the court stated that there was no counteracting forces sufficient to overcome the natural tendency of plaintiff's body to fall with the head in the opposite direction from that in which the car was going. Here there were counteracting forces. The involuntary motion that deceased made to grab the railing in order to keep from falling tended to cause...