The Ill. Cent. R.R. Co. v. Hammer

• Decision Date: 30 June 1874
• Citation: 72 Ill. 347,1874 WL 8821
• Parties: THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANYv.JOSEPH HAMMER.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

72 Ill. 347

1874 WL 8821 (Ill.)

THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY

v.JOSEPH HAMMER.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June Term, 1874.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

APPEAL from the Circuit Court of Effingham county; the Hon. JAMES C. ALLEN, Judge, presiding.

Mr. GEORGE W. WALL, for the appellant.

Messrs. GILMORE & WHITE, for the appellee. Mr. CHIEF JUSTICE WALKER delivered the opinion of the Court:

It appears that the place where this accident occurred was at the depot of appellant, in the city of Champaign; that the depot and grounds of the company are near the center of the city, and lie between Jefferson street on the north and Fayette avenue on the south, and the side track extending still further south. It is an open, uninclosed space, over which there seems to be much travel in transacting business with the company, and in passing from one part of the city to another. Situated as it is, it could not be legally fenced or otherwise inclosed. Railroad companies are only required to fence their tracks at such places as the public have no right to travel, or their stock to run.

Depot grounds and passenger houses are not strictly private property. They are places where persons may resort without permission, for the purpose of transacting business with the company, or with the employees of the company, or for the purpose of meeting friends or others arriving on trains, or to see others depart, and to pass over the same in going from one part of the city to another. Such grounds are made quasi public, by the general use to which they are appropriated. In populous cities, such grounds, from necessity, must be kept open to public use to a limited extent. Where railroad tracks run in the center of streets, it would be a novel doctrine to hold that the public had no right to their use, and that all persons traveling along or across the track were trespassers. When a railroad company acquires its right of way, or grounds in a city, town or public thoroughfare, it is subject to the right of the public to use the same in a reasonable and proper manner. These companies can only acquire rights of any kind on or over public thoroughfares on these terms. Their rights are not paramount to those of the public. They are equal within their scope, but not superior. When they permit the people to pass over their grounds, and invite the public to transact business with them on these grounds, they thereby tacitly license persons to come upon and pass over them, and persons do not become trespassers by doing so in a proper manner. But it is otherwise with their right of way and ground outside of and away from their depot grounds, and beyond the limits of cities, towns, villages and their depot grounds. In such places, the people or individuals have no right to travel. The people are not invited to come there, nor have they any right to go on their tracks or right of way at such places. But where persons go upon or pass over the grounds connected with their depots, they are presumed to know that the place is dangerous, and hence are required to use care and prudence commensurate with the known dangers of the place. They have no right to be reckless, and to omit the use of care. On the other hand, the servants of the company knowing that it is a place where persons are constantly passing, their duty to exercise caution and prudence is also enhanced. In such places, they must use more effort and precaution for the preservation of life and limb than at places where persons have no right to be, and the employees have no right to expect to find them. Whilst the great commercial and business interests of the country demand their protection, still the lives and personal safety of persons are paramount. All other considerations must yield to this, the first and greatest and most important of all rights for which governments are organized and laws enacted.

Appellee was not, therefore, a trespasser, by being in the place where he was when he received the injury. But, notwithstanding this, he was required, being, as he was, in a known place of peril, to use a higher degree of care than if he had been in a place of supposed safety. There would seem to be no doubt that it is negligence for a person, in such a place, to travel on a track of a railroad, where all must know that cars are constantly passing, and engines switching cars, and where a person is necessarily liable to be run over and killed, or greatly injured.

On the other hand, all know that a flying switch, passing on a track without an engine attached, or a bell ringing, or a whistle sounding, is and must, from the very nature of things, be more perilous to life than a switch with an engine attached, with the usual signals being sounded. The object of having a bell rung or a whistle sounded at road crossings and places where there is danger of collisions, is wholly defeated by the use of this mode of switching, and, when employed, it necessarily implies negligence on the part...