Ryan v. Cumberland Valley Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 01 July 1854
• Citation: 23 Pa. 384
• Parties: Ryan versus The Cumberland Valley Railroad Company.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 384

23 Pa. 384

Ryan versus The Cumberland Valley Railroad Company.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Franklin county.

Nill and Reilly, for the plaintiff, relied on the case in 20 Ohio Rep. 415, and insisted, as matter of principle, that where employers undertake to carry their hands to and from their work, they are bound to carry them safely.

Watts, for the defendants, argued that where many persons are employed to work together, their liability to be injured by the carelessness of each other is one of the ordinary risks of their occupation, which they assume to themselves, and so it has been decided: Story on Agency 574; 4 Met. 49; 1 McMullan 385; Strange v. McCormick, reported in the Am. Law Jour. March 1851, p. 398.

The opinion of the Court was decided by LOWRIE, J.

The nature of the case requires the admission that it was the understanding of the parties that the hands were to ride on the gravel train to and from their work and at their work, and the plaintiff is entitled to use this fact as a part of his case. He cannot, however, use it as presenting the whole of the relation between him and the defendants. He was not a mere passenger on the defendants' cars; because his travel upon them was really an incident of a different relation, that of a servant, and this is the character in which we must regard him here. He was no more a passenger than is the coachman, or wagoner, or carter, who is in the employment of another. He was simply a servant, with the privilege of riding, as part of his business, in the gravel train, which was one of the instruments of his work. He could not and does not sue on a contract as a passenger, for that was not his relation; but he does sue on his true relation, as a servant injured by the carelessness of his fellow servants.

The plaintiff seeks to strengthen his position by the allegation and by evidence that it was the duty of the engineer to see that all the cars were safely hooked before starting the train, and that his neglect in this respect is chargeable to the Company. As a matter of fact, this does not seem probable; yet we must examine its influence, as if it might be proved.

This alleged duty did not grow out of any contract between the plaintiff and the defendants, else the contract would have been charged as an essential and relevant bond of their relation, which has not been done. If it was a duty which the engineer owed to the plaintiff in any way, then the action ought to be against him for the breach of it. If he owed it to the defendants, then they alone can complain of its non-performance.

The duty must therefore be alleged as that of the defendants to the plaintiff. In what form shall we put it, or how shall we define it? Is it that, when persons are employed to work for others, the employers are bound to see that the instruments of their work are and shall continue in a condition to be used with safety? Then the coachman, the wagoner, and the carter, who ought to know more about the vehicles which they use than their employers do, have a practical warranty that they are in good order, though practically we know that many of them are nearly worn out; the wood-chopper and the grubber are insured that their axe or mattock shall not injure them by flying off the handle; the engineer, the miller, the cotton-spinner, and the wool-carder have a guarantee for the accidents that may befall them in the use of the machinery which they profess to understand, and which they ought so to understand as to be able to inform their employers when it is out of order.

If this be so, then the care and skill required of workmen is reduced very much below what is ordinarily expected of them. If there be any distinction between any of the cases put and the one in hand, it is too narrow to be made the foundation of a new rule, or to cancel the force of the analogy which they afford. Certainly such a duty has never been considered as belonging to these relations, and therefore it cannot be law.

The only way left for defining the supposed duty is to allege that employers are liable when any of those employed by them are injured by the carelessness of their fellow laborers. Though this proposition has never been decided upon by this Court, it has often been considered elsewhere and decided in the negative, and we know but one case that seems to affirm it: 20 Ohio Rep. 415.

It has been decided in the negative in cases relating to those employed in running railroad cars: 1 McMullan 385; 3 Cush. 270; 4 Met. 49; 5 Exch. Rep. 343; 6 Barb. R. (Sup. C.) 231; 15 Id. 574; in navigating vessels, 2 Richardson 455; in driving a wagon, 3 Mees. & W. 1; in building, 5 Exch. R. 354, 6 Hill 592; and in factories, 6 Cush. 75. And such is the rule even when the careless one is the...