Joyce v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co.

• Decision Date: 27 October 1938
• Citation: Joyce v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 301 Mass. 361, 17 N.E.2d 189 (Mass. 1938)
• Parties: MARTIN JOYCE v. NEW YORK, NEW HAVEN AND HARTFORD RAILROAD COMPANY.
• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

301 Mass. 361

17 N.E.2d 189

MARTIN JOYCE v. NEW YORK, NEW HAVEN AND HARTFORD RAILROAD COMPANY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

October 27, 1938

March 10, 29, 1938.

Present: FIELD, C.

J., LUMMUS, DOLAN & COX, JJ.

Negligence Contributory.

A workman, familiar for fifteen years with the position and use of railroad tracks at the side of a street over which he passed to and from his work, was guilty of negligence as a matter of law in walking on the tracks and not looking to see, or in not seeing if he looked, a car being backed toward him.

TORT.Writ in the Municipal Court of the City of Boston dated December 20 1933.

On removal to the Superior Court, the action was tried before Brogna, J., and a verdict was returned for the plaintiff in the sum of $5,000.

J. J. Whittlesey for the defendant.D. H. Fulton, for the plaintiff, submitted a brief.

DOLAN, J.This is an action of tort to recover compensation for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff when struck by a freight train, while he was walking upon or near railroad tracks upon which the train was being operated by the defendant.^[*] The action was tried to a jury which returned a verdict for the plaintiff.The case comes before us on the defendant's exceptions to the denial of its motion for a directed verdict, to the refusal of the judge to give in substance certain instructions to the jury, and to portions of his charge.Other exceptions taken by the defendant in the course of the trial have been expressly waived.

The evidence in its aspect most favorable to the plaintiff tends to show the following facts: The accident occurred on January 22, 1929, on land then held and in part used by the United States government as a storage place for military supplies and commonly called the "Army Base."Most of the buildings on the premises were, however, leased to private corporations engaged in commercial enterprises not associated in any way with the national government.Railroad tracks, over which the defendant operated its locomotives and cars, ran easterly and westerly, and extended substantially the entire length of the pier or Army Base.On one side of the tracks a paved way called Terminal Street, sixty feet in width, extended centrally along the pier.The tracks involved are on private land and not owned or leased by the railroad corporation.

The plaintiff was an employee of the Bay State Shipping Company, which occupied most of the buildings lying adjacent to the tracks by virtue of a lease or leases from the Federal government.He had been employed by that company or its predecessors on the "Army Supply Base Pier," as a general laborer, for over fifteen years prior to the accident."He did what he was told to do inside and outside the buildings."On the day in question he completed his work at "a little after five o'clock" in the afternoon.He started for home and walked along Terminal Street on the left hand or southerly side, "where the tracks were laid."The surface there was paved in the same manner as the area of Terminal Street adjacent to the tracks on the northerly side.He saw the tracks, with the location and use of which he was familiar.

The defendant placed and removed freight cars at the locus at all hours, but for the most part after 5 P.

M."It was kind of duskish, getting dark."The plaintiff saw no moving trains, but there were freight cars standing "here and there" on the tracks.

"You might get two cars standing here and you might go fifty yards before you would meet two cars more.""Going along all of a sudden . . . [the plaintiff] heard the crash.""Something bumped into him; it was one of the cars the engine was set on to."The locomotive was backing down the tracks in the opposite direction to that in which the plaintiff was walking."The back end of the car hit him and put him out; hit him in the left chest; it knocked him into a hole that was in the side of the track . . . ."The plaintiff did not see anybody there with a signal "of any kind, no light . . . he was walking along and . . . [the car] took him down."" He saw the engine after he got hurt, it was puffing and backing up; after he went out to Summer Streethe did see it."There was evidence that he sustained personal injuries as a result of the accident.Terminal Street was the means provided for and used generally by vehicles and pedestrians to and from Summer Street; it is sixteen hundred feet in length and about sixty feet wide.The tracks in question were located within three or four feet of the buildings on the southerly side of the street.

The burden was on the defendant to prove that the plaintiff had been guilty of contributory negligence.G. L. (Ter. Ed.)c. 231, Section 85.It is only in rare instances that this requirement can be said, as matter of law, to have been satisfied.Mosher v Hayes,288 Mass. 58 .Where the evidence is conflicting or where on all the facts more than one inference rationally may be drawn "it is a question of fact and cannot be ruled as matter of law."Mercier v. Union Street Railway,230 Mass. 397 , 404.Lekarczyk v. Dupre,265 Mass. 33, 38.But where "from the facts which are undisputed or indisputable, or shown by evidence by which the plaintiff is bound [as in the case at bar], only one rational inference can be drawn and that an inference of contributory negligence or want of due care, then the question of due care or contributory negligence is one of law for the court and a...