The Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Kilgore

• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Woodward
• Citation: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Kilgore, 32 Pa. 292, 72 Am.Dec. 787 (Pa. 1858)
• Decision Date: 01 January 1858
• Parties: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Kilgore.

32 Pa. 292

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Kilgore.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Westmoreland county.

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Stokes, for the plaintiffs in error.

The opinion of the court was delivered by WOODWARD, J.

After an attentive consideration of the ingenious criticism to which the charge of the learned judge has been subjected in the hands of counsel, we have come to the conclusion that it was only too favourable to the plaintiffs in error.

Whilst there is no doubt about the doctrine of concurrent negligence which the learned counsel invokes, the circumstances of this case scarcely admit of its application. The company, as public transporters, took the plaintiff and her three children aboard of their cars at Pittsburgh, under a contract to set them down safely at Greensburg. That it was their duty to stop long enough to let these passengers off at the point of destination is not denied, and that they failed in performing this duty is established by the verdict.

The court is complained of for putting it to the jury to say whether the stop was sufficiently long to permit the plaintiff and her children, "together with all the other passengers, to leave the cars with reasonable convenience and safety." The expression all the other passengers is to be understood, as the jury doubtless understood it, as referring to those who were to alight at Greensburg; and, so limited, it was the very form the question ought to have assumed, for she was to get off in the midst of all others who were to get off at that place, and no consideration of her case could be fair that would lose sight of this fact.

It is an established fact, then, that the company did not give her, in the actual circumstances in which she was placed, reasonable time...