Justesen v. Pa. R. Co.
| Decision Date | 25 February 1919 |
| Citation | 106 A. 137 |
| Parties | JUSTESEN v. PENNSYLVANIA R. CO. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
Action by Clara Justesen against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company for damages. Verdict for plaintiff. On defendant's rule to show cause. Rule made absolute.
Argued November term, 1919, before GUMMERE, C. J., and SWAYZE and TRENCHARD, JJ.
Vredenburgh, Wall & Carey, of Jersey City, for the rule.
Richard Doherty, of Jersey City, opposed.
This was an action for damages. The trial resulted in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $1,000.
The case against the defendant was this: The plaintiff, a married woman, on October 12, 1916, started with her baby over the road of the defendant company on a trip to her parents at Petersburg, Va. The southern terminus of the defendant's road was Washington, D. C. Two days before the trip was begun, the plaintiff's husband, by telephone, sought from the information bureau at the defendant's main station in New York advice as to whether the quarantine in the state of Virginia, which had been declared against infantile paralysis, had been lifted, stating that his wife and baby wanted to make a trip to Petersburg to see their people there. In reply to his question, he was told that the quarantine had been lifted, and that it would be safe for his wife to go. This information was incorrect, for the quarantine still prevailed. Acting on it, however, the plaintiff boarded a Pullman car attached to the defendant company's train, at the station in Newark. This car went through to Petersburg, being hauled over the Pennsylvania road to Washington, at which point it was transferred to the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad Company, hauled by that company, to Richmond, and then turned over to the Atlantic Coast Line Company, and by it taken forward to Petersburg. After the transfer to the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Company at Washington, and after the car was attached to the train of the latter company, the conductor of this train entered the Pullman and informed the plaintiff that she and her infant child would have to leave the train, as it was against the law to take children into Virginia, and this she did. On leaving the train, she went into the Union Station at Washington with her child, and remained there until 11 o'clock the next morning, when she returned home. She says that the distress and mortification of her expulsion so affected her that she became sick to such an extent that she was confined to her bed upon her return home for two weeks, and was unable to leave the house for two months.
Assuming that the so-called information bureau at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's station in New York was acting within the scope of its agency in informing plaintiff's husband as to the condition of the...
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