257 Mass. 541 | Mass. | 1926
This is an action of tort to recover damages for the conscious suffering and death of the plaintiff’s intestate, alleged to have been caused by the negligent operation of a street car of the defendant.
The intestate, who was seventy-five years of age at the time of the accident, with good eyesight and hearing, and with ability to move quickly, was injured when struck by an electric car as he was walking across Dorchester Avenue near the corner of Romsey Street, where he lived, and was in the act of passing over or had passed beyond the second rail of the inbound track on which the car was moving. The accident occurred on a clear day in February, between one and two o’clock in the afternoon. Dorchester Avenue at this point is approximately forty feet wide and practically straight for several hundred feet in either direction. At its corner with Romsey Street, a white pole was maintained as a stopping place for inbound cars to take on or leave passengers. The car involved in the collision was travelling inbound upon tracks the nearer rail of which was about twelve and one half feet from the curbing. Shortly before the accident the intestate was seen talking to' a man and standing on the sidewalk near the white pole as people would stand to take a car. At this time the car was about nine hundred feet away, goingat a speed of approximately twenty-five miles an hour. There were about four people on the street or on the sidewalk at the car stop. The jury could have found that when the plaintiff’s intestate finished
It is a matter of common knowledge that white posts indicate stopping places where passengers may get on or off. The fact that a group of people were standing where people ordinarily stand to take an inbound car may have led the intestate to think they might be there to take the approaching car. Whether the presence of these people, combined with the fact that as the car approached this stopping place it diminished its speed from twenty-five miles
The evidence tending to prove that the motorman could have seen the intestate all of the time he was walking slowly eighteen feet from the sidewalk to the place of collision, and that the sound of putting on the brakes to stop was first
Exceptions overruled.