66 N.J.L. 637 | N.J. | 1901
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The first exception sealed for the defendant was “to so much of the charge wherein the court speaks of the doctrine which applies to the duty of the street railroad company to provide places at its termini — in the language of the court.” This exception sufficiently indicated to the trial judge the proposition of law to which it referred, which, in varying phraseology, but with substantial identity, ran through the whole of the judicial instruction to the jury. The doctrine thus challenged was that “when the passenger has reached the end of the route, so far as the railroad company proposes to carry that passenger, and where he must get off, then it is the duty of the railroad company to provide a safe place for him to get off.” In other parts of the charge the jury was told that “if that place where they put a passenger off, by their own act, for their own purposes, is unsafe or dangerous, either from latent defects, which could be discovered by looking for them on the part of the company, or from actual defects or dangers in the street, then that is negligence, for which they are chargeable, because the passenger getting off at that place has a right to presume that it is a perfectly safe place to get off, otherwise the company would not put him off there. It is the duty of the company in that ease to have the whole place in proper shape, not only
The citations from the charge show that the jury was instructed that the plaintiff could recover if the place selected by the defendant for her to leave its car was not a safe place for that purpose. This instruction was, we think, erroneous; its error lay in this, viz., that it gauged the liability of the defendant, not by the quality of its conduct, but by the results of that conduct, thereby covering, indiscriminately, injuries resulting to the plaintiff from causes preventable by the exercise of due care on the part of the defendant and injuries that might have happened notwithstanding the exercise by the defendant of the degree of care legally imposed upon it as a carrier of passengers. The distinction is fundamental, since it marks the difference between a carrier’s liability for negligence and its guaranty of safe carriage. The former inheres in the implied duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff; the latter does not so arise, and was not within the undertaking of the defendant. Hansen v. North Jersey Street Railway Co., 35 Vroom 686.
Furthermore, in a case like the present, where the crux is not the receipt of an injury by the plaintiff, but the part borne by the defendant in the production of that injury, an instruction that the receipt of the injury by the plaintiff was a fact from which the jury might find such negligence as would entitle her to recover damages, was, in effect, a direction of a verdict for the plaintiff; it did not leave to the jury the only debatable question, viz., the culpable character .of the conduct of the defendant.
The gravamen of the plaintiff’s action was the failure of
The reversal of the judgment necessitated by these considerations is not affected by the fact that the defendant was charged by the plaintiff with the breach of an alleged duty to maintain the highway at the point in question. The instruction that has been considered was given to the jury in the alternative, and hence was injurious to the defendant if inapplicable to either of the conditions that the plaintiff essayed to prove. The judgment is reversed.
For affirmance — None.
For reversal — The Chancellor, Chiee Justice, Van Syckel, Dixon, Garrison, Gummere, Collins, Garrets on, Hendrickson, Bogert, Adams, Vredenburgh, Voorhees, Vroom. 14.