Mangum v. North Carolina R. Co.

• Decision Date: 10 October 1907
• Citation: 58 S.E. 913,145 N.C. 152
• Parties: MANGUM v. NORTH CAROLINA R. CO. et al.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

58 S.E. 913

145 N.C. 152

MANGUM v. NORTH CAROLINA R. CO. et al.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

October 10, 1907

Appeal from Superior Court, Wake County; E. B. Jones, Judge.

Personal injury action by C. E. Mangum against the North Carolina Railroad Company and another. From a judgment for plaintiff defendants appeal. No error.

Civil action tried at February term, 1907, of Wake superior court his honor E. B. Jones, judge, presiding. These issues were submitted: (1) Was plaintiff injured by the negligence of the defendant as alleged in the complaint? Ans.: Yes. (2) Did plaintiff by his own negligence contribute to the injury complained of? Ans.: No. (3) What damage, if any, is plaintiff entitled to recover? Ans.: $7,500. From the judgment rendered, defendants appealed.

A railway company must keep its station premises in a reasonably safe condition for passengers, the duty extending to the manner in which a platform is allowed to be used, and a carrier is liable for injury to a passenger by the negligence of a newspaper porter while moving a truck along a platform with the carrier's consent; that the newspaper company may also be liable not relieving the carrier from its duty to furnish the passenger a safe passage to its train.

F. H Busbee and A. B. Andrews, Jr., for appellants.

Chas U. Harris, for appellee.

BROWN J.

The evidence tends to prove that the plaintiff, on the night of July 4, 1903, was a passenger on defendants' train en route from Raleigh to Danville, Va. He passed through the gates of the defendants' station at Raleigh, and as he was walking along the platform used by passengers to reach the cars he was run into and seriously injured by a truck loaded with newspapers. It was in evidence that the man in charge of the truck was not employed by the railroad, but was employed by a newspaper, and it was his business to handle the newspaper mail. When the newspaper mail reaches the station in time, it is the custom for the railroad truck hands to take the mail from the gate down to the train. When the newspapers arrive too late to be taken at the gate by the truck hands, the man who brings the newspapers down from the office takes it down to the cars and delivers it to the mail agents at the mail car. Witness R. E. Lumsden testified that the newspaper mail was handled by the railroad porters when it got to the gate before the transfer clerk and the porters went down with the regular mail. If it arrived in time, the railroad porters took the mail down to the mail car; but, if the newspaper mail got to the gate after the porters had gone down with the mail, the person who brought the newspaper mail took it down to the mail car and unloaded it. When he went down with the mail on the night of July 4, 1903, the newspaper mail had not come. A colored boy named Lunsford Davis handled the newspaper mail to the depot for the newspaper at that time. The witness heard of the accident either that night or the next day.

The only question presented for our consideration is the liability of defendants to plaintiff for the negligence of the newspaper porter upon the above facts. It seems now to be almost elementary that one of the recognized duties of a railway company that undertakes to carry passengers is to keep its station premises in a reasonably safe condition so that those who patronize it may pass safely to and from the cars. Pineus v. Railroad, 140 N.C. 450, 53 S.E. 297, 111 Am. St. Rep. 856; Wood on Railways, 310, 1341, 1349. This duty extends not only to the condition of the platform itself, whereon passengers walk to and from the trains, but also to the manner in which that platform is allowed by the common carrier to be used. Weston v. Railroad Co., 73 N.Y. 595; Wood, supra. The defendants owed a duty to plaintiff and to all other passengers to keep its depot platforms used by them as means of ingress and egress free from obstructions and dangerous instrumentalities, especially at a time when its passengers are hurrying to and from its cars. Pineus v. Railroad, supra; Railroad v. Johns, 36 Kan. 769, 14 P. 237, 59 Am. Rep. 609.

The fact that the injury to plaintiff was inflicted by the negligence of the...