Whelton v. West End St. Ry. Co.
| Decision Date | 01 March 1899 |
| Parties | WHELTON v. WEST END ST. RY. CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Robert W. Nason and Thomas W. Proctor, for plaintiff.
George H. Mellen, for defendant.
The plaintiff had had nine years' experience as a street-car conductor in the plaintiff's service. He went into a car house for a car. The car had to be moved to the main track by means of a transfer table moved by electric power operated by another employé, a car shifter, who, with the plaintiff, were the only persons in the car house. The car shifter ran the car onto the table. The trolley rope then had to be shifted to the other end of the car. The car shifter handed the trolley rope to the plaintiff, saying, "Here is the rope." The plaintiff, taking the rope, started with it, walking on the floor of the car house. When he was half way around to the middle of the car the car shifter started the table. The plaintiff called out to him to wait. A spring attached to the roof of the car was caught, and this caused the plaintiff to walk back the other way; and while so doing, and looking up and trying to free the spring, a track rail, which was part of the fittings of the table, and which projected some 18 inches from it over the car-house floor, with a space of about an inch and a half between the bottom of the rail and the floor, and which was in motion with the table, caught the plaintiff's toe threw him down, and pushed him along the floor, and against another rail fastened to the floor. This occurred on June 12, 1895. The transfer table had been put in on June 2, 1894, replacing one to which power was applied in a different manner, and with rails projecting only about half as far. The plaintiff had been in the habit of using such a transfer table five or six times a month since the defendant had used electricity as a motive power. He might have got upon the car before the transfer table started; and the trolley rope was long enough so that if, in shifting the trolley pole, he walked on the car-house floor, he could have kept himself beyond the reach of the projecting rails. At one point in his testimony, he gave an affirmative answer to the question whether, of course, he had not noticed the projections before; but he testified that he took no particular notice of them, and that his attention had never been called to the fact that there was a space between them and the floor. He also testified that he was shifting the trolley pole in the same way he had always been in the habit of doing it at the times when he had done it, and that he had performed exactly the same operation in transferring a car probably a week before, and knew what was to be done. There was a foreman who had charge and control of the car house, to whose orders the plaintiff was subject when he went to the car house for a car, but the foreman was not present at the time of the accident. The declaration has one count, under St.1887, c. 270, for negligence of a superintendent, and one, under the common law, for negligently failing to furnish a reasonably safe place in which to work. A verdict for the defendant was ordered upon each count. The questions for decision are whether the verdict was...
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