McDonough v. Boston Elevated Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 03 April 1911
• Citation: 208 Mass. 436,94 N.E. 809
• Parties: McDONOUGH v. BOSTON ELEVATED RY. CO. MANSER v. SAME.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

208 Mass. 436

94 N.E. 809

McDONOUGH

v.BOSTON ELEVATED RY. CO.

MANSER

v.SAME.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

April 3, 1911.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Loranus E. Hitchcock, Judge.

Actions by Beverly McDonough and by George E. Manser against the Boston Elevated Railway Company. There was a verdict for plaintiff in each case, and defendant excepted. Exceptions overruled.

Tort for personal injuries sustained while plaintiffs were passengers on one of defendant's cars, alleged to be caused by an electric shock.

Coakley & Sherman and Roland H. Sherman, for plaintiffs.

F. W. Fosdick and Walter Shuebruk, for defendant.

LORING, J.

These were two actions tried together.

[1] Both the plaintiffs were sitting on the smokers' seat in the rear of the cross-seats of one of the defendant's semiconvertible cars at the time of the accident here complained of. McDonough was sitting at the forward end of the smokers' seat next the first cross-seat. Manser was sitting next to him, and one Mulligan, who was called as a witness by the plaintiffs, sat in the corner. Of a sudden Manser fell forward into the aisle holding onto his head and McDonough felt a blow or shock and came to in a doctor's office. One of his arms was broken in three places and the next day there were water blisters all up and down it. Each plaintiff testified that he knew what an electric shock felt like and that at the time in question they had a feeling like that which they had experienced when they had had an electric shock. In addition McDonough testified that the doctor (since deceased) who attended him ‘told him that he was suffering from a severe electric shock.’ There was evidence that a large car of the defendant passed the car in question at the time the accident happened, and that as it passed there was a noise (to quote one of the plaintiffs' witnesses) ‘as though the cars came together, or something was rubbing like r-r-r-r-r-r.’

There was evidence that the windows behind the plaintiffs were open and outside the windows and distant five inches from the back of the seat on which they were sitting was a wire grating, and that there was a metallic piece in the floor near the head of the smokers' seat which ‘would make a ground for electricity.’

The accident happened just before the car came to a drawbridge, or just as it left it-which was not clear on the evidence. There was evidence that the defendant's tracks on the drawbridge were farther apart than they are in the streets, and that not far from each end of the bridge they curve in to the ordinary street width. An expert witness called by the plaintiffs testified that these large cars swing on a pivot in the middle and that if the forward end of one car was swinging around this curve going one way and the rear end of another was swinging around it going the other way, they might collide. The same witness testified that he had examined the car here in question. After describing the arrangements of electricity in it he testified that if the ends of two cars did meet, as they swung around...