Leghart v. Montour R. Co.
| Decision Date | 20 April 1959 |
| Citation | 395 Pa. 469,150 A.2d 836 |
| Parties | Anna E. LEGHART v. MONTOUR RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellant, and Frank Leghart, Additional Defendant (two cases). Frank LEGHART v. MONTOUR RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Harold R. Schmidt, William M. Gardner, Rose, Rose & Houston, Pittsburgh, for appellant.
Robert L. Prior, Julia M. Doyle, Weis & Weis, Joseph F. Weis, Jr., James P. McArdle, Pittsburgh, for appellees.
Before CHARLES ALVIN JONES, C. J., and BELL, MUSMANNO, BENJAMIN R. JONES, COHEN and BOK, JJ.
The plaintiffs, husband and wife, have verdicts for personal injuries which the Court below sustained. Defendant asks for judgment non obstante or a new trial.
The accident happened at a crossing, at a time when the road was being used as a detour for Route U. S. 30. It was between three and four in the morning, rain was falling, and the road was black-topped. Plaintiffs, driving northwest on the detour, crossed a small bridge and at once came to defendant's tracks, which crossed the detour at right angles. Immediately beyond the tracks the road ended in an irregular T.
In the automobile were the plaintiffs; husband driving, his wife beside him, a son and daughter and the son's fiancee in the back seat. The driver stopped, looked, and listened, saw nothing, and went on slowly across the tracks. The blinker lights of the crossing signal were not flashing, and it was for the jury to say whether they did not flash at all, as the plaintiffs said, or whether they went on automatically when the train was 815 feet distant, as defendant said they were designed to do. In making a 90~ right turn at the T, one of the car's right wheels went into a hole, three by two feet by twelve inches deep, that nestled in the angle of the turn and lay about two and a half feet from the rails at its nearest point. The driver did not see the hole, as he was looking first at the tracks and then at the T-end of the road for traffic and for a sign telling him which way to turn. He couldn't see very well, since the rain and the black top of the road made the surface dark, and he couldn't tell whether there was a hole or not.
He tried to extricate the car by surging it backward and forward, but to no avail. When he opened the door to get out he heard the whistle of a train, and told everyone to get out at once. The two girls did so by the left door, and the son pushed the right front seat forward in order to get out from behind his mother and then turned to help her, because she had an ulcered foot. When her feet were on the ground she saw the train and pushed her son to safety. All but her got away. The engine hit the car, pushed it into her, turned it through 180~, and stopped 45 feet past the crossing.
The train was visible for 294.5 feet, due to a 45~ curve from east to northeast which ended about at the crossing. It consisted of two engines and a caboose and was going from twelve to fifteen miles per hour. The engineer said that he had been whistling and belling for 2,000 feet, but the left curve made the rails ahead invisible and the beam of the headlight go away from the tracks to the right. He had to rely on the fireman, who saw the car on the rails when the engine was 100 to 150 feet from it. He called at once to the engineer, who threw on the emergency brake.
A railroad's negligence may consist in failure to give adequate warning facilities not only to the traveling public but to its own crews as well. The fireman, testifying for the plaintiffs, said that a route sign located next to the blinker signal prevented his seeing the car until the engine was too close to stop. Actually, there were three obstacles to vision at that point: the route sign, a stop sign, and the blinker signal, all bunched together. The jury could infer that without these obstructions there was room to see and act and stop. The fireman could see from 294.5 feet away; he did first see the car when somewhat less than 150 feet away; and the train did stop within 200 feet. If the obstructions did not in fact affect the fireman's view he could be held negligent for not noticing the car in time to stop, or the railroad could be held negligent for not lighting a temporary detour crossing of one of the state's most heavily traveled thoroughfares. It was admitted that the headlights and taillights of the car were on, and that there was no street light at the crossing.
Under these circumstances the questions of negligence and contributory negligence were clearly for the jury. It is therefore unnecessary to consider whether defendant had control of the crossing roadway and was negligent in maintaining it.
Defendant raises only two points that merit concern. One is that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony and pictures showing that the hole was repaired after the accident. Evidence of subsequent precautions is ordinarily inadmissible. Baran v. Reading Iron Co., 1902, 202 Pa. 274, 51 A. 979; Seeherman v. Wilkes-Barre Co., 1916, 255 Pa. 11, 99 A. 174. An exception exists where the purpose of the evidence is to show control or to impeach relevant testimony. O'Brien v. Jeannette...
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