Sullivan v. Old Colony R. Co.

• Decision Date: 28 November 1888
• Citation: 18 N.E. 678,148 Mass. 119
• Parties: SULLIVAN v. OLD COLONY R. CO.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

148 Mass. 119

18 N.E. 678

SULLIVAN v. OLD COLONY R. CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

November 28, 1888

COUNSEL

J.E. Cotter and C.F. Jenney, for plaintiff.

J.H Benton, for defendant.

OPINION

MORTON C.J.

The plaintiff was a passenger upon the defendant's railroad having a ticket which entitled him to be carried from Boston to Randolph. It appeared at the trial that he was drunk and disorderly, using indecent language, to the annoyance of the other passengers; that he was requested to be quiet, and refused, and thereupon the officers of the defendant, who were also railroad police officers, not intending to arrest him, but to remove him so as to protect the other passengers from annoyance, removed him from the cars to the platform of the depot at an intermediate station and carried him along the platform to the baggage car, which was the third car forward of the car in which he had been riding, using only reasonable force, and that he rode in the baggage car to his home at Randolph, without attempting or expressing any desire to leave the train. It is clear that under these circumstances it was the right and duty of the defendant's officers to protect the other passengers by removing the plaintiff from the car in which he was riding. Vinton v. Railroad Co., 11 Allen, 304. They might have left him at the place where he was removed, and if, after being removed, he had demanded to be released, or had refused to enter the baggage car, it would present a different question; but he did neither, and the act of putting him in the baggage car was done in kindness to him for the purpose of carrying him to his home, which the jury may well have found to have been reasonable and proper, and not to have been an assault or imprisonment. The principal contention of the plaintiff is that they had no right to remove him except by arresting him under the eighteenth section of chapter 103, Pub.St. This statute which provides that railroad police officers may arrest a noisy or disorderly passenger without a warrant, and remove him to the baggage or other suitable car, and confine him there until the train arrives at some station where such passenger can be placed in charge of an officer, who shall take him to a place of lawful detention, was intended to confer additional powers upon officers of the railroad who are appointed railroad police officers, and not to take away the common-law right...