117 Ga. 165 | Ga. | 1903
Mrs. Randall obtained a verdict against the street-railroad company for damages growing out of personal injuries received by being thrown from one of its cars as she was in the act of alighting therefrom. The company made a motion for a new trial, which was overruled, and it excepted. In our opinion the point dealt with in the headnote is the only one raised by the motion which it is necessary to discuss in this opinion. It seems that the plaintiff was a passenger on one of the defendant’s cars, which she had boarded to go to her home. The car was very much crowded, and passengers were standing in the aisle and on the rear platform. At the corner where she wished to alight, the track of the line on which she was riding crossed another track, and by
We see nothing objectionable in the charge which we have quoted. That it is the duty of a street-railroad company to exercise extraordinary diligence for the safety of its passengers is too well settled to need argument; and incident to this obligation is the rulé, when cars are stopped for the purpose of discharging or taking on passengers, to give sufficient time for such passengers to get on or off in safety. ■ It is true that the conductor can not be expected to wait indefinitely, when he does not know whether or not there is any one desirous of getting on or off the car; but it is also undeniably true that the duty rests upon him to take what
This case is easily distinguishable from that of Central of Georgia R. Co. v. Dorsey, 106 Ga. 826, relied upon by counsel for the plaintiff in error, where it was held that while it is the duty of a conductor to ascertain before reaching a flag-station whether or not there is on board a passenger ticketed thereto, there is a corresponding duty upon the passenger who has purchased a ticket to such station, upon discovering that he has been overlooked by the conductor, to call the latter’s attention to the fact and surrender his ticket, in order that the conductor may know the passenger’s destination and have the train stopped for him to alight; and that the failure of a passenger to observe this duty is material in determining whether or not, in a given instance, carrying the passenger beyond his station was wholly attributable to the negligence of the railroad company, or whether the passenger, by exorcising the proper diligence, could have avoided being carried beyond such station. That was a suit against a railroad company for ■carrying a female passenger beyond her station, and had in it no element of damage to the person, growing out of the negligent fail-' ure to give sufficient time for the passenger to alight at "a station •at which it had stopped. The question there dealt with was as to the diligence or negligence of the conductor in' finding out if a passenger desires to alight at a place where it is not customary to stop at all, with reference to the contract of carriage; here, it is as to the diligence of the conductor in ascertaining if the passenger wishes to alight at aplace where it is required by law to stop, with reference not so much to the contract of carriage as to the ■duty to exercise extraordinary diligence to provide for the safety ■of the passenger.
As indicated in the outset, the other grounds of the motion disclose no reason why a new trial should be granted. There was