Argued November 21, 1941. Plaintiffs brought this trespass action against defendant to recover for personal injuries sustained by wife plaintiff upon alighting from defendant's bus. The jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiffs. Defendant's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict was granted, and judgment was entered for defendant. These appeals followed.
Wife plaintiff, with her young daughter, on November 6, 1937, about 7:30 p.m., was a passenger for hire on a bus operated by defendant, which is a common carrier. It was a large bus with a door on the right side near the front that opened and closed by a lever operated by the driver for entrance and exit of passengers. The bus was running along Marshall Road, a public highway, which extends westwardly from Sixty-third Street, in the city of Philadelphia, into Delaware County. Wife plaintiff was going to her home on the east side of Millbank Road, in Upper Darby, Delaware County, which runs north and south and meets Marshall Road at right angles, but does not intersect it as Millbank Road stops at the south side of Marshall Road. The latter is about 25 feet wide, and is paved with macadam for about 20 feet northward from the curb on its south side. Extending northward beyond the macadam section of the road for a width of about 5 feet is a shoulder paved with broken stone and gravel. There is no curbing on the north side of Marshall Road, and only open fields adjoin. At the request of wife plaintiff the driver of the bus stopped at a point which would be at the northwest corner of Marshall and Millbank Roads if Millbank Road extended across Marshall Road. For about a month prior to the date of the accident, there had existed a hole or depression in the stone and gravel shoulder on the north side of Marshall Road. This hole or depression abutted the macadam section of the road, and was about three feet long, one foot wide, and about *Page 223 three or four inches deep. If Millbank Road had extended across Marshall Road, the hole or depression would have been near the northwest corner of the intersection. Some of the drivers of defendant's buses had stopped to allow passengers to alight at a point beyond this hole or depression. Wife plaintiff said that she was cognizant of this fact, having been a passenger on such buses. There were no lights on the north side of Marshall Road, but there was an electric light on the southwest corner of Millbank and Marshall Roads. When the bus stopped wife plaintiff took the hand of her daughter and helped the child from the platform to the stationary step on the bus and then to the roadway. She followed her daughter, and when she stepped down to the roadway she stepped into the hole or depression and fell, sustaining injuries. She knew of the existence of the hole or depression, but was unable to see it when she stepped from the bus because it was dark.
Plaintiffs' contention is that the point at which the bus stopped was a place of obvious danger.
Common carriers of passengers, such as defendant, do not ordinarily have fixed stopping places, and cannot be expected to come to a stand with exactness each time at the same point where passengers are discharged. Low v. Harrisburg Railways Co.,
Plaintiffs' theory is that the bus could have been stopped at a point east of the hole or depression or at a point west of and beyond it, and that the failure of the bus driver to avoid a manifest danger made him guilty of negligence which was imputed to defendant. But the evidence in our opinion does not establish that the hole or depression was of this type. The defect was in a highway over which defendant had no control and no duty or authority to repair (Perret et ux. v. George et al., supra, p. 223; Thompson v. Philadelphia et al.,
We are unable to find any reason for the driver of defendant's bus to have anticipated that to stop at the place requested by wife plaintiff to alight to reach her home would involve a peril to her. She assumed that the bus driver did not stop in the proximity of the highway defect, and that he had the same knowledge of the highway condition that she had. Acting on these false assumptions she stepped from the bus into the darkness without taking any precaution. See Fordyce v. White Star BusLines, Inc., supra, p. 112; White v. Harrisburg,
We agree with the court below that the evidence does not justify a finding that defendant was guilty of any negligent act which made it liable for wife plaintiff's injury.
The facts in the present case are more analogous to *Page 226 Thompson v. Philadelphia et al., supra, where we held as a matter of law that the street railway company was not responsible for the accident, than to the facts in McCollum v. PittsburghRailways Co., supra, or in Gerlach et ux. v. City of Philadelphiaet al., supra, cases relied on by plaintiffs. There is nothing in these cases, where we held that the matter was for the jury, which commits us to a similar holding in the circumstances of the case before us.
Judgment is affirmed.