246 Pa. 460 | Pa. | 1914
Opinion by
Ivan R. Hartman, the appellee, was employed as a brakeman by the Western Maryland Railway Company, engaged in interstate commerce. On November 7, 1912, he went to Gettysburg, this State, under orders to report
One of the rules of the defendant company, offered in evidence by the plaintiff, fixed the maximum speed of a freight train such as he was on at twenty miles an hour, and in the general notice to all of the company’s employees, also offered in evidence, there is the following: “Obedience to the rules is essential to the safety of passengers and employees and the protection of property.” The plaintiff testified that the train was running at the rate of twenty-five or thirty miles an hour when it reached a curve, at which point the engineer, without any warning, suddenly put on the brakes and then instantly released them, so jarring the train that he was jolted from it. This testimony was sufficient to send the case to the jury under the federal statute, for, if
The first assignment-complains of the failure of the court to instruct the jury as to the weight to be given to the uncorroborated testimony of the plaintiff, in view of its positive contradiction by all of the witnesses called by the defendant. This assignment does not call for a reversal of the judgment. In his charge to the jury the learned trial judge specifically referred to the fact that the testimony of the plaintiff as to the rate of the train’s speed was but an expression of his own individual judgment, in which, he was not corroborated by any one; and as against his testimony the attention of the jury was called to that of the two engineers, the fireman and the other brakeman, that the rate of speed was less than nine miles an hour. If the appellant wished for fuller instructions as to the weight to be given to the testimony of the plaintiff, it should have asked for them.
The second question suggested by the appellant in the statement of questions involved is the plaintiff’s assumption of the risk of being jolted from the top of a car while the train was in motion. We do not regard this as a question before us, in. view of the following answer
The four assignments of error are overruled and the judgment is affirmed.