219 N.Y. 317 | NY | 1916
On Yovember 26, 1911, plaintiff’s intestate, Frank Meisle, was a passenger on defendant’s steam ferry boat from Weehawken to West Forty-second street. A portion of the boat called the “horse runway ” was set apart for vehicles, the foremost of which were placed about seventy feet from the bow. Passengers used the forward part of the boat in front of the vehicles. At each end of the boat were gates, three feet high, made of iron bars bolted together. Back of these were two chains to be stretched across the width of the ferry boat and hooked to posts. When properly in place they swung fifteen inches above the deck. The purpose for which these chains were so placed was, according to the testimony of plaintiff’s witnesses, to check careless drivers from running their teams or machines past the lines thus indicated. Chocks were also provided to be used by the deck hands in blocking vehicles.
Edward Barry drove his automobile on to the ferry boat at Weehawken and stopped it about ten feet back of
That no ordinarily prudent eye would see that an automobile on a ferry boat might be carelessly or accidentally started and that an accident might occur to a passenger if no safeguards were maintained against it, cannot be asserted without running counter to human experience. In the hands of a nervous or unskilled chauffeur an automobile might be awkwardly stopped or started and thus driven off the boat if no.proper barriers were interposed. “ It was not necessary that the defendant should have had notice of the particular method in which an accident would occur, if the possibility of an accident was clear to the ordinarily prudent eye.” (Munsey v. Webb, 231 U. S. 150, 156; Condran v. Park & Tilford, 213 N. Y. 341.) Automobiles, like horses, do run off ferry boats and runaway horses and motor cars do not choose their course with regard to the safety of bystanders.
The defendant urges that it exercised reasonable care
The judgment should be reversed and new trial granted, with costs in this court and in the Appellate Division to abide the event.
Willard Bartlett, Oh. J., Hiscock, Chase, Collin, Hogan and Cardozo, JJ., concur.
Judgment reversed, etc.