Union Traction Co. of Indiana v. Haney

• Decision Date: 07 October 1921
• Docket Number: No. 10843.,10843.
• Parties: UNION TRACTION CO. OF INDIANA v. HANEY.
• Court: Indiana Appellate Court

78 Ind.App. 624

132 N.E. 260

UNION TRACTION CO. OF INDIANA

v.HANEY.

No. 10843.^*

Appellate Court of Indiana, Division No. 1.

Oct. 7, 1921.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Marion County; Louis B. Ewbank, Judge.

Action by Phrone Haney against the Union Traction Company of Indiana. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

James M. Ogden, of Indianapolis, and H. Nathan Swaim, of Indianapolis, for appellee.

REMY, J.

Action to recover damages for personal injuries. Appellant operated an electric street railway from the city of Indianapolis to the town of Broad Ripple. Appellee was a passenger on one of appellant's cars, which at the time was being operated northward along and upon College avenue in the city of Indianapolis. When the car reached Forty-Fifth street, which was a regular stop, appellant at the request of appellee stopped the car for the purpose of permitting appellee to alight. Because of the alleged negligence of appellant in erecting and maintaining its tracks above the grade of the street, appellee, while attempting to alight, fell to the pavement and was injured. The complaint is in two paragraphs, each of which was by the trial court held sufficient to withstand a demurrer for want of facts. There was an answer in denial. A trial by the jury resulted in a verdict for appellee.

The first paragraph of complaint charges in substance, among other things, that the place where appellant stopped its car, for the purpose of enabling appellee to alight, was an unsafe place to discharge passengers because of the great distance from the step of the car to the pavement; that this distance was due to the fact that appellant had negligently erected and maintained the rails of its tracks 27 inches above the grade of the street, which fact would, and did, require appellee and all passengers attempting to alight to step down a distance of more than 3 feet from the step of the car to the pavement; that the danger was not apparent to a passenger who was attempting to alight from the street car, and that appellee, a woman, was at the time wholly ignorant of the fact that there was an unusually great distance between the step of the car and the pavement at that point, and “was not in a position to discover such fact”; that appellant, well knowing the condition and the danger involved in alighting from the car, and knowing that the danger was not apparent to appellee, stopped the car for the purpose of permitting appellee to alight,...