Stock v. Wood
| Decision Date | 21 January 1884 |
| Citation | 136 Mass. 353 |
| Parties | James E. Stock v. Harriet E. Wood |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Suffolk. Tort for personal injuries occasioned to the plaintiff by being run over on Adams Street, in the Dorchester district of Boston, by a horse and buggy driven by the defendant. The answer contained a general denial, and set up the negligence of the plaintiff and of those having him in charge. Trial in the Superior Court, before Knowlton, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions, in substance as follows:.
The plaintiff, who, at the time of the accident, was four years and one month old, offered evidence tending to show that he left his house in Dorchester on October 22, 1881, accompanied by one sister who was five years and nine months old, and by another sister eleven years and five months old, for the purpose of going to some shops to do some errands; that after arriving at Adams Street, the elder sister went first into a grocery and bought some parcels, leaving the plaintiff and her younger sister upon the sidewalk; that, on coming out, she gave these parcels to the younger sister to take care of, and then went into another shop on the same side of the street, and near by, to purchase something, leaving the plaintiff and her sister outside on the sidewalk, coming along the street, the brother in charge of the sister; that the elder sister did not notice the position of her brother when she went into the shop, except as stated above; that while in the last-named shop she was told of the accident by her younger sister, and, on coming out, discovered her brother sitting upon the curbstone of the sidewalk injured and bleeding.
A steam railroad track crosses Adams Street near the place of the accident, and the shop into which the elder sister last went was on one side of the railroad track, and the plaintiff was on his sister's coming out of the shop, sitting on the curbstone of the sidewalk on the other side of the railroad. The horse and buggy had passed over the track, so that the plaintiff, when found by his sister, immediately after the accident, was on one side of the track, and the buggy on the other, about one hundred feet distant. The horse and buggy were driven by the defendant, and were close up to the curbstone beyond the track, and had there stopped.
Prior to the time of the accident, the younger sister was in the habit of helping her mother in housework, going errands to shops, and taking...
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