North Jersey St. Ry. Co. v. Purdy

• Decision Date: 24 January 1906
• Docket Number: 40.
• Parties: NORTH JERSEY ST. RY. CO. v. PURDY.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

142 F. 955

NORTH JERSEY ST. RY. CO. v. PURDY.

No. 40.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

January 24, 1906

Charles D. Thompson, for plaintiff in error.

Warren Dixon, for defendant in error.

Before DALLAS and GRAY, Circuit Judges, and BUFFINGTON, District Judge.

DALLAS Circuit Judge.

The parties to this case will be referred to as they respectively stood in the court below; that is to say, the plaintiff in error will be designated as the defendant, and the defendant in error as the plaintiff. The action was brought to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff which she alleged were caused by the negligence of the defendant's servants. On November 18, 1904, she was a passenger on a trolley car of the defendant which collided with a wagon laden with bales of hay, and, as she testified she was thereby 'knocked from the side I (she) was sitting on to the opposite side,' and was seriously hurt. Evidence was adduced by each party, and, the case having been submitted to the jury, a verdict for the plaintiff was rendered, and judgment thereon was entered. Thereupon this writ of error was sued out, and 19 errors have been assigned. But the only substantial questions that have been pressed in argument may be disposed of without treating of the specifications in detail.

The denial of a nonsuit was not assignable for error, and the request of the defendant for the direction of a verdict in its favor was properly refused. The evidence upon the issue as to the defendant's negligence was such, at least, that 12 men might reasonably infer from it that the accident was caused by lack of due care upon the part of its servants and, this being so, the duty of the trial court to submit that issue to the jury was, under the well-settled rule, a perfectly plain one. The happening of an injurious accident is, in passenger cases, prima facie evidence of negligence on the part of the carrier, and where, as here, the passenger is not chargeable with contributory negligence, the burden rests upon the carrier to show that its whole duty was performed; and whether or not it was performed by the defendant in this case was rightly referred to the jury for determination upon the evidence. Inland & Seaboard Coasting Co. v. Tolson, 139 U.S. 551, 11 Sup.Ct. 653, 35 L.Ed. 270, and cases there cited.

No reversible error was committed by the learned judge in stating in his charge that 'the plaintiff was injured which is undisputed, while riding in the trolley car of the defendant, on the 18th of November last. ' In the next sentence he said: 'She was a passenger in that trolley car, and I believe was going towards Jersey City'; and it is not at all likely that the jury supposed him to intend, in this prefatory portion of his instructions, to do...