The declaration in this case is as follows: “The plaintiff, Charles Crowley, a minor under the age of twenty-one years, by his next friend, Robert Crowley, sues the defendant, the Cin
Defendant moved the Court ‘ ‘ to require the plaintiff to be more specific in the charge in the declaration as to the train, engine, or car which was run against him, and to set forth the particulars thereof.” The Court sustained the motion, and ‘ ‘ ordered that the declaration set forth the time of day or night the accident occurred, the direction the
The learned judge was in error. No rule of pleading requires that a plaintiff, suing a railway company for personal injuries received in a collision with one of its trains shall declare the hour .of the day in which the alleged wrong was done, or the direction in which the train -was moving at the time, or which one of the defendant’s trains caused the injuries. It is sufficient for the plaintiff to aver, as was done in this case, that on a particular day and near a particular place ‘‘the defendant did
The reports of these cases show that in the first of them the plaintiff averred that on a certain day and in a certain county, without stating the hour or' the particular place, the defendant wrongfully and negligently ran its engine and cars upon and against the plaintiff, without stating the direction or kind of train, and that in the other two cases it was averred that the defendant wrongfully and negligently ran its engine and cars upon and against, etc., without stating what particular train it was, or the direction of its movement.
Caruthers gives the following form of declaration for damages for running carriage of defendant against carriage of plaintiff, namely: “The plaintiff sues the defendant for one thousand dollars, as damages for forcibly, on the first day of June, 1859, driving a carriage against the plaintiff’s carriage, in which he was riding along the public highway, whereby the plaintiff’s carriage was broken, and the plaintiff was thrown out of it and wounded, and suffered therefrom great pain, and was disabled from attending to his business for a month, and was at great expense in endeavoring to be cured, and also in having the carriage repaired.” History of Lawsuit, Sec. 159.
In the second volume of Chitty on Pleadings (16th Am. Ed.), p. 576, that part of a declaration stating the cause of action against a railway company for negligently running a train against the plaintiff, is given in these words, viz.: ‘ ‘ That the defendants were possessed of a railway locomotive engine and train of carriages attached thereto, and were,- by their servants, driving and conducting the same upon a certain railway, and the plaintiff was lawfully crossing the said railway, and the defendants, by their servants, so negligently drove and conducted the said engine and train that thereby the same ran and were driven against the plaintiff and severely injured him.”
Nothing is there averred as to the direction the colliding train was moving, nor as to any feature distinguishing that train from any other train of the defendants, nor as to the particular place of the collision.
In Norfolk, etc., R. R. Co. v. Ormsby, 27 Gratt. (Va.), 455, which was an action against a railway company for running over a young child, as here, the declaration of the plaintiff, which is made the
There again are mentioned the day, but not the hour of the injury, the train complained of, but not its distinguishing features or direction; the railway on which it was operated, but not the colliding point.
In reference to the last of these matters, the place of collision, that declaration, like those quoted from Caruthers and Chitty, is far less specific than is the declaration before us.
It is worthy of remark, also, that no one of those three, declarations particularizes the elements of negligence attributed to the defendant, but all of them state the act of negligence in general terms, as was done by this plaintiff.
Just what was meant by the concluding clause of the order, “and such other particulars as will enable the defendant to prepare its defense,” is not easily ascertained. If, as indicated in the argument of counsel, it was intended thereby to require the plaintiff to state whether or not the collision occurred at such a place and in such a movement of the train, that the defendant was not bound to observe the statutory precautions for the prevention of accidents (Shannon’s Code, Sec. 1574, Subsec. 4), then the requirement was unauthorized, for the plaintiff was obliged by no rule of good pleading to aver the one alternative or the other. He need not, as to the locus in quo and as to the movement of
This opinion controls the case of Robert Crowley, the father of this plaintiff, against the same defendant, for the loss he, the father, sustained by the injury to his son, the declaration in that case being almost a literal copy of that herein considered, and the rulings of the court below being the same.
Reverse both cases and remand for further pro - ceedings.