Richards v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co.
| Decision Date | 16 December 1957 |
| Docket Number | Docket 24562.,No. 70,70 |
| Citation | 250 F.2d 609 |
| Parties | Raymond G. RICHARDS, Appellant, v. NEW YORK, NEW HAVEN & HARTFORD RAILROAD CO., Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Edward F. X. Ryan, New York City, for appellant.
Kenneth B. Morton and Edmund J. Moore, New York City, for appellee.
Before HAND, MEDINA and LUMBARD, Circuit Judges.
The plaintiff appeals from a judgment, entered upon the verdict of a jury, dismissing his complaint against the defendant, a railroad on which he was riding as a passenger. The only question raised upon this appeal that we shall discuss is whether the judge failed to charge the jury properly. The plaintiff was one of a party returning to New York from Greenwich where they had been on an outing. Two passenger coaches had been especially assigned to the party, in the first of which the plaintiff had been riding. However, before the train reached Larchmont where he meant to get off, he had gone back to the second special coach to talk to a friend, leaving some hand luggage where he had sat in the first coach. On being told that the train was approaching Larchmont, he went forward to pick up his luggage in the first coach and then back to the rear platform of the first coach, the trap door of which had not been raised, and the vertical door was shut. When the train stopped no attendant was at hand, but he tried to open the vertical door; and when he failed, he went to the front entrance of the second coach, whose vertical door he did succeed in opening. However, by that time the train had begun to move, and he was unable to lift the trap door which when raised gives access to the three steps that provide the exit. When he found that he could not do this, he jumped from the trap door to the station platform three and a half feet below, and upon landing fell upon his knees causing the injuries for which he sued.
His complaint was that the railroad had failed to have any attendant, either at the back platform of the first special coach or at the front platform of the second, to help passengers to alight. The railroad denied that this was a part of its duty, because it did have such an attendant at the front end of the first coach which abutted upon a coach open to any passenger who might board the train. The judge told the jury that it was the railroad's duty "to have the doors of the train opened at Larchmont for a reasonable period of time with its trap door lifted so that the plaintiff, using due diligence, could alight from the train while it was at a standstill." The plaintiff submitted several variants in place of this and complains that the judge refused them; but the differences are so trivial that we shall not discuss them. A trial at law is not an exercise in verbal dialectic. The only question of any importance is whether the charge as to the plaintiff's contributory negligence was wrong. It appears to us curious that upon the appeal the defendant does not press as a ground of affirmance the motion for a directed verdict that it made at the end of the plaintiff's case and repeated at the close of all the evidence. We can see no justification for leaving it to a jury to say that a man who jumps from the trap door of a moving train three and a half feet above the station platform does not take his chances. We do not indeed mean that there can be no circumstances that might justify his taking that risk, for the issue of contributory...
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United States v. Reed
...counsel searching for reversible error. Neither should it be "an exercise in verbal dialectic." Richards v. New York, New Haven and Hartford R.R. Co., 250 F.2d 609, 610 (2d Cir. 1957). We are satisfied that if appellant's counsel had been seriously concerned about the possibility of racial ......
- Rogers v. LA SALLE STEEL COMPANY, 12003.